


Teach a Man to Fish

by HarveyDangerfield, Venn



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Developing Relationship, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rescue Missions, Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29678793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyDangerfield/pseuds/HarveyDangerfield, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venn/pseuds/Venn
Summary: After Carmichael nearly dies at the hands of the Handler, he decides to take matters into his own fins. He goes back in time to find Number Five when he was still just a boy in the apocalypse, and rewrite the entire timeline by taking him under his wing at a young age in order to kill the Handler before she has a chance to ruin everything.Anything that develops along the way is... incidental.( updates every saturday! )
Relationships: Carmichael/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> heyoooo so im marking this fic as explicit ahead of time because eventually it will be, and I don't want to take readers off-guard who came in expecting a wholesome fic. this ain't gonna be that. 
> 
> that being said, any actual NSFW isn't going to feature until Five is somewhere around 17-18 because this isn't old-man-in-a-young-body Five, it's ACTUALLY young Five. because of that, it isn't going to feature for a Minute, there's a lot of story to get through first. those of you who are still interested, carry on! this is going to be a monster slowburn. 
> 
> ALSO! I've taken a LOT of liberties with the lore of AJ's species and the world he comes from. A lot of what's going to happen in this fic in regards to AJ isn't canon, it's all just stuff I made up. I looked up every scrap of lore about him that I could and there just plain isn't much, so I decided to embellish!

When it finally would come down to it in the end, the Handler's downfall would be a toilet. 

AJ Carmichael would have thought it would be her pride that eventually brought her down, and he supposes that in some sense it is. When she found out about his betrayal-- or really rather just _assumed_ it, considering she acted without finding any evidence-- she pinched him by the tailfin and tossed him into the bowl of her own personal toilet, and flushed him down into the sewers. He thinks she must have assumed he would be eaten by something in the pipes, or wash up and beach somewhere and suffocate, or else just live out the rest of his days swimming in grey water. 

In his decades on Earth, AJ had learned one thing as an almost species-wide truth-- most people tend to assume all goldfish are the same. They have an idea in their head of what a goldfish is like, the sort you get from the carnival and stick in a bowl for two weeks until it dies. They aren't known for their longevity or hardiness. The Handler probably thought she was condemning AJ to a short lifetime of humiliating defeat by porcelain throne. 

Unfortunately for her, AJ is a shubunkin, and centuries of good breeding had gone into making him naturally very hardy in the elements. It wasn't hard for him to follow the pipes to a drop off and then swim out into a river, and begin the first phase of his plan. 

He knew it wouldn't be a quick or easy process, and that he had no real way of knowing what havoc the Handler would wreak in the meantime, but if his plan went accordingly (and they usually did, up until very recently) then it wouldn't matter _what_ damage she did, he would be able to undo all of it. Step one was going to be the most complicated-- getting out of the water. Without his host body, getting anything done on land would be impossible, but he couldn't just throw himself at the first person he saw, either, and so he followed the stream to a larger body of water, and began the lengthy process of navigating rivers one by one upstream, while avoiding predators in the reservoir in between trips. 

The first river eventually just got to be too shallow of a trickle for him to follow farther than a mile, and he had to turn back. The second river turned into a dead end when an old-fashioned mill style water wheel proved to be too dangerous of an obstacle to risk trying to brute force his way past, and the third river he was able to follow for days and miles upstream, only to be thwarted by a damn _water fall_ that he had no hope of climbing. 

It was the fourth river that finally bore fruit, bringing him to a much gentler and lazier stream where he didn't have to fight the current so much, and it stretched wide and shallow enough that it reached the shore in multiple spots, forming a sandy pebbled beach that looked to be some kind of picnic area on a hiking trail. It would be the perfect place to set up the first phase of his plan-- over a month since he'd been flushed, in the first place. 

It took weeks of watching and waiting and planning, memorizing the schedules of the various people who came by and waiting for his opportunity. Eventually, one would come, he just had to be patient. In the meantime, his life consisted of rooting around for food that barely could sustain him considering his very particular nutrition needs, and avoiding predators at every turn. It's an exhausting five weeks before finally, finally an opportunity presents itself. 

He'd seen the boy that comes to sit at the edge of the beach a few times. He brought fantasy novels with him to sit on the sand and listen to the water trickle by and immerse himself in the pages for an hour or two before riding away on his bike. He looked like he was about fourteen or fifteen, and judging by his shabby clothes and greasy hair, he's probably somewhat of an outcast among his peers. He would be perfect. 

AJ spit water at him to get his attention, and then flitted away as soon as the boy looked up in confusion, rubbing the droplets of water from his cheek. he catches sight of the white and gold streak as it zips behind a rock and sits up straighter in curiosity. AJ knew he had to pique his interest, and when he peeked back out from behind the rock and finds the boy staring straight into the water, he knows the job is done. 

Creeping up to the water's edge, he flicks his fins until he can stick his head up out of the water and give a very firm, if tiny, "Hello." 

Predictably, the boy screams, grabs his book, and runs to his bike so fast that his shorts fall down and flash his ass crack a bit. How charming. AJ knew he would be back, and busies himself with digging for worms and grubs again to try and sate the aching in his stomach. What he wouldn't give for a fucking cigarette. 

It's not for three days that the boy comes back, long enough that AJ had actually started to doubt his plan, but he catches sight of a shape looming over the edge of the water, its shadow changing the temperature of the water enough to get his attention. Sure enough, the boy is back, and it looks like he's inspecting the water in search of AJ. 

He swims right up to the edge of the water again, and the boy staggers back a few paces with a gasp, as AJ sticks his head back out of the water. "Don't run," he says this time, and the boy drops down to his hands and knees on the beach. 

"You-- you can talk!" he blurts. 

"Yes I can," AJ says, careful to keep his gills below the water so he doesn't choke. "So can you. We've so much in common." 

That gets the boy to smile, and AJ knows he's got him. One fib about his ability to grant wishes later, and the boy (named Arthur) promises to come back the next day with a plastic bag to take AJ home with him. One more night of dodging predators, and AJ would finally be somewhere with a stable ecosystem again, where he wouldn't have to fight just to survive. It _really_ isn't his strong suit. 

The ride in a plastic bag tied up at one end in the basket of a bicycle is less than comfortable, but it's still better than the cold river, and when he's eventually upended into a deep tupperware for safekeeping in the boy's bedroom, that's even better. He warns Arthur in hushed tones not to let any of his friends or family know about him, or they'll want wishes, too, and he has only so much strength and energy within him to grant them, so it would be better for the boy to keep them all to himself. 

Strength and energy, he claims, that he won't be able to manifest for some time, thanks to the witch that cursed him to live in that river, named, of course, the Handler. It was actually surprisingly satisfying to weave together a fantastical and magical tale about how she'd forcibly banished him from his kingdom, turning him into a goldfish against his will where he was once a strong and handsome and well-loved wizardking, and Arthur ate up every single word. 

The boy manages to steal a couple cigarettes from his mother's purse at AJ's request, and he brings him outside with the tupperware that night after his family have all gone to sleep, and he holds the cigarette for the fish to stick his head out of the water and breathe through, filling his body with the first proper food he's had in weeks. 

Fortunately, his weeks spent in the wild gave him time to formulate the next step of his plan. He'd anticipated having to use the boy to get him to someone who could transport him to the next place he needed to be, but to his surprise, Arthur is so invested in his story, so _truly_ does he believe that he's found himself in an honest-to-god fantasy fairtytale, that he provides AJ with everything he could possibly need. 

AJ's memory is as pristine as it's ever been, his long weeks in the wilds not at all dulling his mind, and so he cross-references the date with cases he recalls crossing his desk, and his and Arthur's location, and determines that they have just one week to make it from Toronto, Canada, to New York City, in order to make it in time to catch one of the Commission's agents who was found dead in NYC on July 13th, 1955, with his briefcase mysteriously missing. It was never recovered. 

These were the only types of cases that were ever brought to AJ's attention, ones that could have direct consequences on the safety of the Commission as an industry. He'd poured hours of manpower into trying to track down and recover that briefcase, before ultimately calling it a cold case when no investigation managed to turn it up more than 40 days into the search. He'd ordered for a round-the-clock monitoring of the area for any temporal activity, and shelved the case for the time being. 

He'd never known where that briefcase went-- none of them ever did. But now he's starting to formulate an idea of exactly into whose fins it might have fallen. They'd never seen any signs of temporal activity in the area after that briefcase disappeared, but they wouldn't have, after all. If they had, that would mean they'd be somehow aware of AJ's interference in the timeline, and the interference he planned would erase that timeline entirely. It would have been a paradox of the highest order. 

It was a flawless plan, in almost all facets. Unfortunately for him, Arthur was but one 15 year old boy with a bicycle, and they had a 50-hour bike ride ahead of them at least-- and that was if the boy could maintain a steady pace as a somewhat out of shape young boy, who had parents who would undoubtedly notice his absence. But it was all AJ had to work with. Packaged up in Arthur's mother's nicest and deepest glass casserole dish to provide AJ with a little bit clearer of a view on the ride, a couple packs of cigarettes he'd stolen and packed along with several meals of his own, and over $100 in stolen money from his father, AJ almost felt bad for how much trouble the kid would be in after all of this is said and done, and all of it roughly for nothing. 

The trip had to be taken in short bursts, as poor Arthur couldn't ride for more than five hours or so at a time before he needed a rest and a snack. Luckily, border security is pretty lax at this point in the timeline, since the Handler had flushed him down a Commission toilet, which spat him out the other end of their temporal stasis field and into the year 1955. Had they been at any other point in the timeline, it could have been much more of a challenge just to get _into_ America, but as it is the boy is able to just carry his bike across a shallow river to avoid the lazy patrolmen altogether. 

He regales the boy with tales in between his bouts on the bicycle, while he eats his snacks and helps AJ smoke half a cigarette and references the map to make sure they're still going in the right direction. AJ tells him about his plans to return himself to his human body and use magic to go back in time and befriend the unwitting squire who'd been taken advantage of by the evil, usurping Handler, to make sure that the timeline would never come to pass in which he was cursed in the first place-- and just like before, Arthur hinges off every word like it's gospel. It never seems to occur to him that any of it could be false-- but it's not really a testament to the boy's intelligence that it doesn't. After all, who knows if he would have taken AJ seriously if he wasn't a literal talking goldfish. 

The poor boy is absolutely exhausted by the time they finally make it to NYC, with just a couple days to spare before the Commission agent will wind up dead in an alley between a fishpacking plant and parking garage on Chesapeake Avenue, shot dead by a tweaker who was assumed to be the one to steal the briefcase. Probably thought he could open it and pawn whatever was inside, or at the very least the case itself. Luckily for them, when the Agent hits the ground, the tweaker runs off without touching the briefcase. 

"How come your knight is wearing a suit and tie and not a suit of armor?" Arthur asks, his hands shaking as he picks up the briefcase. 

"If he was wearing a suit of armor, don't you think he would stand out?" AJ says, starting to lose patience with the whole story the closer they get to the finish line. He instructs Arthur how to twist the dials on the top of the case, and then with a flash, the boy is startled to find them no longer in a dirty alley speckled with blood and old rain puddles, but instead standing in what looks like a very, very fancy bathroom, with white marble tiled flooring and quiet relaxing music playing, a big koi pond set up in the center of the room with a softly splashing fountain churning the water pleasantly. 

"Where ARE we?" Arthur hisses, clutching the briefcase under one arm, and AJ's casserole dish under the other. 

"My bathroom," AJ replies. "See those doors there? Those lead to my chambers. There's going to be a headless man lying on a table in a suit. Do not panic when you see him. Move quickly and quietly." 

He guides Arthur through the process of unlatching a strange glass dome from a device beside the table, where the water inside had been boiling to purify both the dome itself, and the water inside, while AJ's much younger self is currently swimming around none the wiser back in that pond in the bathroom. He never took those moments often, he always had to rely on someone else to come fetch him from the pond and return him to his body, and that kind of trust was often nearly impossible to place in anyone. He doesn't even trust _Arthur_ , he's just his only option. 

As he's carefully deposited from the casserole dish into the dome, and Arthur (spilling just a bit of the water) fixes the dome back onto the metal collar around the neck of the headless body, AJ feels as he finally, after so many long weeks, reconnects to his body. He never realized how incredibly _small_ he'd felt for so long, he'd just gotten used to it. But as he re-interfaces with his host, and he's able to move his fingers and toes again, and he levers himself up to his feet, he feels a million feet tall. 

"You've been an excellent help, Arthur," he says, as the boy backs away in confusion, clutching the briefcase to his chest. "Now hand that to me, and I'll finally be able to grant you your wish."

"You said you were going to turn back into a human," Arthur says, frightened and no longer trusting of the fish now that parts of his story are starting to fall apart. 

AJ sighs. He's not about to jeopardize everything for the sanity of one 15 year old boy in one timeline, so he just reaches down, grabs the handle and tugs it from his arms by force. "Your _wish_ , Arthur," he says impatiently. 

"I just want to go home," Arthur whimpers. 

"Consider it done." AJ twists the dials on top of the case, grabs the boy by the shoulder, and in a flash they're standing in the back yard of his house, behind the bush cover that Arthur had taken him dutifully behind over the days in order to feed him cigarettes. He almost feels bad, leaving him here with nothing but memories of the adventure, but he's too impatient to bother going on some fetchquest when time is already of the essence, thanks to his own orders in the past meaning there's a limited window before his use of the briefcase will be tracked. He has to act before the Commission has a chance to find him-- provided his theft of his own body from the past hasn't already negated that timeline in some regards.

Arthur quickly takes a few steps back away from AJ, who fights the urge to roll his eyes at the fearful response. As if he'd done anything to deserve it, he's never been anything but polite to the boy-- but he knows this is a lot for one poor child from the 50s to understand."I've brought you back to an hour after we left, so your parents will never know you were gone. They'll be confused about the cigarettes and money missing, but turn out your pockets and all will be well," he says as he adjusts the dials on top of the case once more.

"W-- will I ever see you again?" Arthur asks plaintively. 

"No," AJ answers honestly, already itching to move on to the next phase of his plan. "Thank you for all your help, Arthur. Ta!" 

And with another flash, he's gone, leaving behind Arthur and any lingering flickers of remorse or affection are effectively stomped out by the sight that greets him on the other side. It's not pretty, or even comforting, the sight of the ruined wasteland of what had once been New York City stretching out around him in every direction under the blinding light of midday. The same wasteland that one illustrious Number Five, at the tender age of 13, had spent the last year surviving. 

He didn't want to show up _too_ shortly after Five's arrival. He wanted to make sure the boy had time to develop his tanacity, his fearlessness and survival skills, and AJ knew exactly how long that took. They'd been monitoring Five since the moment he first arrived in the apocalyptic hellscape, and they knew that it really only took him about a year to fully develop all the fundamental skills he would use and expand on to survive the next 39 years that would follow, before the Commission finally decided to get their hands on him. 

All he needed was for Five to know the value of doing what it took to survive, and one year was all the boy truly needed to suffer. It was AJ's mistake to let it go on for as long as it did the first time, and he was here to correct that error. 

Actually _finding_ the boy wasn't hard. He tended to leave a pretty distinct trail behind him-- and why would he expend the effort to cover his tracks? He had no reason to believe there was anything left alive to follow him. At this point, there hadn't even been enough time for the surviving wildlife to mutate into dangerous enough creatures that he had to start covering up his scent at least-- at this point, following the signs of his presence was as easy as if he'd left a trail of breadcrumbs intentionally. 

He finds what looks like a temporary shelter made of pieces of sheet metal all jerry-rigged together into a sort of shack, tethered to the side of a building that was still mostly standing, and gave him an excellent view of the city from a bird's eye view. However, he could tell just from looking at it that it was empty. The boy was most likely out and about somewhere, exploring or collecting supplies or hunting what little food he could get his hands on, and he knew it would only expend unnecessary effort to go looking for him when he would return to his camp eventually, and so AJ made himself comfortable on a piece of rubble that had a flat enough surface to sit on, crossed his legs, and folded his hands over his knee to settle in and wait.

It was sheer, unfortunate coincidence that had Five returning within the hour, and from the opposite direction from which AJ was positioned. Unfortunate for AJ that is, who had every intention of making contact and establishing communication with the lost boy right away to begin with, like he was a dinner guest arriving early and offering to help set the table.

For Five, getting to see his unexpected company and size him up from a distance was all he needed to make some bold decisions, very fast. It was luck that he was raised with an ape as a pseudo father figure, so Five was already blessed without the bias that animals couldn't be just as much of a threat as humans could be. Of course, a fish in a bowl affixed to a human body had a considerably more sinister aura around it-- but with a robot mother 'humanity' had a very loose definition. So Five saw AJ lounging on a chunk of rubble like a chair and his first thought wasn't 'What the fuck is that', it was 'Who the fuck is that, and what the fuck do they want'.

Five had never fancied himself an entertainer, even less so when he didn't even know the person he was meant to entertain. So, while AJ lounges, Five crouches behind an old brick wall, and watches. He had been out scavenging for supplies-- it's what he spends most of his days doing in the apocalypse, knowing damn well that food left to the elements will go bad even if it has a can to keep it safe, and cloth material doesn't stand a chance for very long in the volatile and often unpredictable weather cycles the planet had been reduced to. But all thoughts of scavenging are wholly forgotten in the presence of a clear and identifiable threat. The last year had done nothing for Five's manners, which had been atrocious to begin with. 

His hair was long after a year of inattention, hanging from his head in greasy, thick waves to his jaw. It was there that was apparently the furthest Five would let it grow, as the ends had clearly been crudely cut off with what looked like some sort of blunt blade-- or in the case of his left side, an experiment with fire that had gone mostly well. His clothes were filthy, but mostly because AJ had caught him between cleaning cycles, and the same could be said for his body, as well. Patchy spots of dust and grime stuck to Five's face, his hands, dirt clogging his fingernails and stained across his layered clothes.

For all Five considers AJ a threat for his less-than-normal appearance, he himself should be considered one for the same. The most human thing about him is probably the horrible excuse for a mustache now gracing his upper lip-- just a handful of dark, sparse hairs that one day promise to be something great-- but for now, it's too short to reliably shave with a knife, and too long to ignore. Fortunately no part of his bedraggled appearance detracts from how fearsome he is with a katana-- one of his favorite weapons found in the apocalypse, so far unused on anything except mannequins and trees.

He seems perfectly comfortable with it now, though, keeping himself crouched low to the ground with the weapon clutched tightly in his fist. He still hasn't been able to properly teleport since he got here, his powers still jammed or overloaded or something-- but he didn't need his powers to gain the element of surprise, not after so long without them, and with his own home-field advantage.

The tip of the katana settles into the soft skin at the back of AJ's neck right beneath his metal neckpiece, and Five finds the tip sinks in just as it would if the human body was fully organic in origin. "Who are you and who sent you?" Five asks, his voice sharp as he keeps himself positioned fully behind the stranger. If he turned, he'd pierce himself more on the tip of Five's sword, held by such a steady hand, considering his age. The tip sinks in deeper, until Five can see just a bead of red pebbling at the point of the blade, "And try not to lie. I already know there's no one left on the planet."

AJ immediately stiffens, and then sighs, turning in his bowl to face Five while the rest of his body remains positioned the way it is. If Five thought he could get the upperhand on a body which has a freely-moving, detached head and sense of sight, he was mistaken. His body doesn't move, and even raises its hands in surrender, but the fish's bright gold eyes give Five a cursory glance-over. He's just about as filthy as he expected he would be, but it would undoubtedly be less of a process, re-integrating him into society than it was after 40 years of this same wasteland. 

" _Please_ be gentle with the body, I just got it," he says, a surprisingly polite british voice being projected from the speakers in the base of his bowl. "My name is AJ Carmichael, and I'm here to rescue you from the hell you've been living in for the past year. Nobody sent me, I'm here of my own accord. If you'd like to leave this wasteland behind and return to polite society, I'd request you put down the _sword_ , first." 

Of _course_ he has a sword. Typical of a 14 year old boy that at the first opportunity he had, he resorted to a sword. It's such a normal power fantasy to have that AJ can hardly even be mad at the fact that it's currently piercing the back of his neck. 

There's a terse moment where Five doesn't put the weapon down, and why would he? He's coming off the back end of an entire year in complete isolation from all human contact-- hell, all _terrestrial_ contact, animals included, and expected to just trust a fish sitting on top of a man. People had gone insane after much less time, and under better circumstances. Of course, AJ knew that Five came out on the other side of this (mostly) sane, but it made sense that there would be an adjustment period where Five was a little more wild than man.

And then the pressure lessens. The katana dips, and Five takes a slow step back, still half-crouched like he was expecting an attack at any moment, "You can take me back in time?" Five asks, voice in his chest like he was trying to sound older than he was. "How?"

"Not back in time," AJ replies as he stands up off the rubble he'd been sitting on, and brushes any clinging dust off his suit before reaching down to pick up his briefcase. "Not _yet_ , at least. I've a business proposition for you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting another chapter a bit early because i want to establish saturdays as chapter upload day. starting from here out, we'll be uploading a new chapter every saturday!

Crouched on a piece of rubble behind AJ that gives him a higher vantage point than the fish, looking quite like a filthy little goblin, Five considers the man in front of him-- if he can be called a man. He's the first living _anything_ Five has seen in a year, but that doesn't automatically make him trustworthy. Five would take solitude over subterfuge any day. 

But he can't deny that the prospect of a "business proposition" is intriguing. What exactly a goldfish could have to proposition a half-feral 14 year old, he couldn't begin to guess, so he just jerks his chin forward to indicate for the man to speak.

"Ten years of your life, in exchange for a no-strings-attached return trip to your family on your 24th birthday, and a personal guarantee that the apocalypse you've survived for the past year will not come to pass," AJ says, and judging by the slight widening of his eyes, they're exactly the right words to get the boy to listen. 

A frown crosses Five's face, a familiar expression to one he'd been wearing one of the last few times they'd met. How funny considering how very different circumstances these were, especially when Five leans back and holds out his hand, eyes narrowed into suspicious slits, "On one condition," He says, hand still outstretched, "I already have an asshole dad. I'm not looking for another one." AJ had referred to it as a business proposition, and Five seemed to prefer that too, "And I expect that goes for all kinds of apocalypses. No bullshit loopholes about _different_ apocalypses or anything. No one dies."

"Well, if all goes according to plan at least one person will die," AJ says, reaching out to grab and shake Five's hand. "But it won't be anyone you'll miss. On my honor, there will be no apocalypse whatsoever, this one or otherwise."

He'd honestly expected more of a struggle from the boy, knowing how he was later in life. But it's no surprise that he would be more agreeable after only one year of a survival of the fittest, look out for number one lifestyle, rather than forty. AJ glances up towards the sky, where distant grey clouds have been looming steadily thicker for the past hour as he waited for Five to return, which probably is what heralded his retreat to his home in the first place, and then he looks down at his watch to confirm how much time it's been since he first stole and began using his briefcase. 

"Perhaps we could retreat indoors to discuss the details of our arrangement?" he suggests. As much as Five looks like he could use a good long stand out in the rain, AJ doubts very much that the majority of what will be blowing through any minute now will actually _be_ rain.

"What do you care? You're in a bowl," Five says rudely, before rolling his eyes and turning around. 

For a second it looks like he's walking away, but after a moment of being out of eyeshot behind a wall of rubble Five reappears, bearing the fruits of his labor for the day-- what looked like roughly a duffel bag of food and supplies, and a heavy tarp bundled in a tight wad. "Wanna carry this in for me?" Five asks, dropping the tarp at Carmichael's feet before hefting his duffel bag over his shoulder and walking into the ramshackle shelter, leaving the door ajar for him to follow.

It was much larger than it looked. From the outside, it looked like Five had built the scrap metal lean to against a wall, but it looked as if Five had been methodically carving into the trash wall-- or perhaps he'd built it with junk, himself, as suggested by the heavy wall of sturdy televisions that had been methodically stacked to form a back atrium of sorts. AJ could stand in it with only a little bit of a hunch, expected of someone who was barely 5'5 himself, to not build it for someone who easily clears 6'0. 

"Close the door before it starts," Five instructs once AJ is inside. He's already inside the small living space, lighting candles that were interspersed throughout to provide both heat and warmth. It was a big enough area to account for one very well-worn leather sofa, which looked to be mostly where Five slept, judging by the blankets and pillows piled on top of it and the floor next to it. Across another wall was a large piecemeal map taken by many different map manufacturers, composing a general topography of the area and its streets. 

With a flick of his wrist, the match extinguishes in Five's fingers, and he stands at the industrial spool that served as a table for him in the corner of the room, duffel bag open atop it, "You act like you know me. Do we know each other?"

"I know _you_ ," Carmichael says, finding a bit of wall to stand with his back to, rather than presumptuously take a spot on what looks like the only furniture that serves as Five's bed, not counting a plush chair in the corner that's also occupied-- by a doll? Odd. "But at this point, you don't know me. We don't actually meet for another 39 years in the future. The circumstances of our meeting and what follows leads to a great amount of suffering, both on your part, mine, and especially your family's. I've made the decision to come back and undo all of that suffering from taking place, quite against the will of the people who brought that suffering upon us-- which also, happens to be me. A considerably younger and more naive version of me." 

If Five were anyone else, he would worry about having to slow down and explain every part of his proposition, but he knows personally how quickly Five is able to absorb information, and he knows that even before his internship with the Commission, Five knew a great deal about time travel and multidimensional string theory, thanks to the teachings of his father. So rather than insult the boy's intelligence by breaking down the intricacies of time travel, he continues. 

"There is a woman who works for me, whose personal involvement in your life brought you to the brink of apocalypse not just once but twice, and used you to perform a hostile takeover of my company so she could betray you and put me in a bowl on her desk like a common housepet. All I want from you is the next ten years of your life, time that we will spend honing you into a deadly weapon, and then you will use that skill to kill her. After which time, I will return you to your family, and the apocalypse will be averted."

There's a thoughtful silence that follows. To be expected, considering the very concise breakdown on the plan at large. Five, who had been dutifully organizing his collection of scavenged bits and bobs, had gone quiet and still as he thinks, looking at the floor of his shack even as a heavy wind begins to pick up outside, making the rusted, but sturdy metal creak eerily. It looked as if the entire thing began to lean in response to the sudden buffet from outside, but Five seems unbothered. 

He doesn't look disturbed by this news of his life. He doesn't seem to have much of an opinion at all. The fact that he makes it 39 more years in this hell, the fact that his family suffers, _he_ suffers, faces down two apocalypses, is betrayed and used, would be a lot to take in-- but he could trade that all away for this opportunity. "Kind of weird to be offered a chance for a do-over before I even do it once, you know?" Five asks finally, breaking the silence before turning back to his duffel bag and beginning to stack cans and supplies on the table. 

"I imagine so," AJ nods his tank.

"Will I get to know who I'm killing right away, or are you going to keep it a secret?" Five asks, with very little staggering over the word killing, like the concept was as natural to him as breathing. He wasn't the half-insane barbarian they'd taken from the Wastes before, and he certainly wasn't the genetically-modified monster they'd made him to be later, but there was something to be said for being raised by a man who expected his children to dispense justice like fucked-up gashapon machines.

"I intend to keep no secrets," AJ says as he watches Five curiously, setting up his haul of random odds and ends and canned food, as if the news that he's going to be leaving this shack behind hasn't quite sunk in yet. The sky outside opens up and rain begins to drench the street in sheets, and AJ watches as Five dutifully crams a dirty old towel under the crack in the door, so no rainwater has a chance to seep into his dry enclosure. He already knew that the boy had experience handling himself in this environment, but it's very different actually watching him in action than it was reading reports on paper or seeing recordings on a screen. 

Clearing his throat, he sets the heavy briefcase down on an elevated surface so it won't be damaged by any water in case it does drizzle inside, and he clasps his hands in front of him. "Her name is the Handler. Her title, at least. She's an executive in my company, and up until very recently she was a valued employee. But once she involved herself in your life, she began spinning these thoughts of grandeur in her head, and decided to take my position by force. I spent the last two months in wild rivers thanks to her, after she flushed me down a toilet. I'd very much like to return the favor."

"How do I end up working with a bunch of fish-people?" Five asks, apparently unable to stop himself. He looks up when he does, earnest curiosity in his eyes. It doesn't seem to be insulting, but rather genuinely interested-- and misinformed. There's a loud peel of thunder outside that makes the entire house shake, but Five goes on unaffected, clearly accustomed to such volatile weather phenomena. "I have a lot of questions. Does it matter if I ask? If we're virtually rewriting the timeline anyway, it'll never happen in the first place, right? So no paradox."

"Of course," AJ says, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "You were scouted by us directly for your strength and ability. It was the Handler herself who was responsible for plucking you from this wasteland and bringing you to work for us with a 5-year contract and a false promise that you would be allowed to go back to your family when she was done with you. Even after you returned home, she sent assassins after you, and after fleeing with your family she continued the pursuit. Unfortunately I can't tell you if she ever found you and your family, after she used you to take over, I spent the rest of my time in a glass bowl with extremely limited information." 

Crossing the small space in order to perch himself on one of the spare TV's at the back, he crosses his legs in front of him. "For the record, I'm the only caraquid in my company. The rest are human, like you." Then he pauses, and chuckles. "Well, human, anyway. We both know there's no one quite like you." 

If there was anywhere for AJ to properly sit down, Five doesn't gesture for him to take it. It's sparsely furnished, AJ's television probably the best bet as far as chairs go-- there was a nook that was clearly a latrine that had the door politely shut, and a makeshift 'kitchen' next to him with a camp stove and some cans of kerosene. 

"Five years? She offered to get me home before I turned 20?" Five asks. It sounded basically too good to be true, so no wonder she ends up betraying him and his family, "If she only wants me for five years, how do we meet 39 years down the line?" 

AJ already knows this next information won't be received well, but he's anticipating the confusion and anger already. "Management made the unanimous decision to maintain a watch over you for as long as it took them to feel like they required you. The acquisitions department monitored you for a period of five years-- for them. 40 years for you. The Handler found you at the age of 53, and offered you the contract then."

Five opens his mouth, but AJ holds up a hand. "Before you have to ask-- yes. I was a part of that decision, I won't pretend that I wasn't. Though a majority of the process was out of my hands and relegated to the respective departments, after it left my desk. Running the company from the top requires a lot of difficult decision making, and sometimes I make the wrong calls. That's why I'm here-- to correct the error. Leaving your fate up to acquisitions was a mistake, I intend to oversee your training directly."

There's definite distrust in the way Five is looking at him now, eyes narrowed and shoulders stiff like a cat preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse-- but for all his poise and posturing, he doesn't move, nor does he throw AJ out. The storm continues outside, the rain hitting the walls in thick, heavy sounding splashes that sound more like water balloons making impact. Five lets the silence sit uncomfortably for a second, hoping the fish twists a little bit in his bowl.

It made more sense, of course, to think that they waited until he was an old man to take him. He would have taken any deal at that point. Five looks around his shack, eyes lingering on the stove, the candles, the towel slowly becoming saturated with brackish water at his door. "Then I guess I really am getting a rewrite on my timeline, aren't I?" Five finally says with a grim smile, completely devoid of humor, "Also explains why you came to get me so early. I've only been here a year. Did you guys even know about me, yet?"

"Yes, we did," AJ says. "We knew that you would arrive in this apocalypse before you were even born. This timeline was destined to have this broken period in the middle from which a new civilization would eventually grow, but I've had quite enough of scorched-earth tactics for one lifetime. There are plenty of other timelines which meet their fate, the universe won't suffer if yours doesn't."

He glances back down at his watch again, and as much as a fish's face can emote, he grimaces. "Which is why we're going to have to work quickly. We won't have very much time before the Commission realizes I'm here. They'll already be monitoring you, and while anyone who sees me with you won't become immediately suspicious about my presence seeing as I'm the only one of my kind and can't be mistaken for anyone else, so my presence isn't likely to be questioned by any of my underlings, if enough information is unwittingly passed around and it makes it to my younger self, he'll certainly try to intervene."

"Work?" Five repeats. As an older man he had a much better poker face-- or perhaps less surprised him. Now though, his face easily betrays the gamut of emotions its been asked to portray in just ten minutes-- from anger at his betrayal to interest in the man (fish?) in front of him, back to anger at being left to suffer for so long in this Hell, and now curiosity. "What do we need to do?" There's a familiar edge in that tone, at least, the deadpan definite speech of someone who would do what it took to succeed. 

Chances were good that if this mysterious organization found out Five was fraternizing with an older version of one of its members, it would probably turn out poorly for him. Sure, he was powerful and smart and there was no one like him-- but a liability was a liability, and they weren't obligated to rescue him.... and if he was still stuck here 40 years down the line, it meant Five still couldn't teleport. Or wouldn't, for whatever reason. 

That train of thought brings Five short, and he hesitates for a second before frowning and looking over at Carmichael, "I should tell you, I can't teleport. I don't know if I could when you knew me, but usually I can. Since I got myself stuck here, though, I haven't been able to. So if that's one of the reasons you want me, I can't help you."

"No, no, you won't have to worry about that. It'll take you a couple years before you can do that again, but we won't require that to return the Commission-- that's what the briefcase is for," AJ says, gesturing to the case itself. "This will allow us to jump through time and space together, so long as we maintain physical contact. No, what we need is unfortunately much more complicated than that." 

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small pad of paper and a very fancy marble pen, the lid of which he unscrews and fixes over the back end of the pen, and he holds both objects out to Five, already knowing from experience that he's going to need to write down his thoughts as AJ continues to explain. 

"The Commission's campus is kept in permanent stasis, in a single second of the year of 1955, in order to protect itself from accidental discovery by civilians. Because it only exists for a second according to the linear flow of time, there's no chance that a wandering hiker or wild animal could stumble across it. The stasis field prevents the flow of time within the Commission from altering the world outside it, and therefor runs not parallel, but perpendicular to the timeline it exists within. If the year 1955 that it resides within flows horizontally, the Commission's timeline stretches vertically from a single point on that timeline."

He would stop to ask if Five understood, but judging by the way Five is already scratching away at the pad with his pen, he knows the boy is following. "If we destabilize the stasis field, one of two things could happen. Either the paradox shielding protocols will come down with it, and the entire system will collapse in on itself in an instant. Every single Commission agent will be erased from time permanently, including you and me _and_ your family-- as well as the victims of any meddling by the Commission in the past. Which, branching outwards, is billions upon billions of people. Obviously, we don't want that to happen. If the paradox shield holds, then all we have to worry about is hundreds of years suddenly unfolding outwards like a jack-in-the-box, forcing room for itself in the linear timeline of the 1950s, suddenly thrusting forward the established timeline by a couple centuries. Either way, no pressure."

"So we need to figure out a way to get this version of yourself back into the Commission without triggering any sort of paradox, and without destabilizing the stasis field from the inside out," Five reiterates, nose already in the pad of paper he'd been given. It had been a while since he'd properly seen blank paper and a pen that he didn't have to struggle and revive before using. Vanya's book sat dutifully under his pillow, covered in the skeleton of what would have become the frantic ramblings of a half-crazed man. This time around, though, that book was going to be considerably more bare.

Looking down at his pad of paper, Five found he'd been scribbling things in the borders without even realizing it, secondary mathematical equations he hadn't had to think about in some time, rising to the surface and jotted down without a second thought as to why, "The easiest thing would be keeping you out of the picture until it's time to rescue me," Five admits, "But you probably don't want to keep a hostage that long, right? Especially yourself, and especially if that version has to come back in time and get me, now. Do you think you're particularly open to being reasoned with? I doubt you could talk to yourself, but maybe I could convince yourself to come back in time willingly."

"Honestly, I don't think we'll have to worry about that," AJ says, folding his hands together on his knee. "The body I'm currently using, I stole from my younger self, roughly..." he glances down at his watch. "An hour and twenty minutes ago, according to LCT-- that's linear commission time, but according to our fixed place in time, it was 16 years ago."

He slips that hand into his jacket again and this time produces a packet of cigarettes and a fancy marble lighter, matching the pen he'd handed off to Five. Tapping a cigarette out of the box, he lights it and then holds it up to a circular filter in the base of his tank, and with a mechanical hiss, bubbles of nicotine rise up through the water in his bowl. Five watches as he inhales a few of these bubbles with a sigh of relief. 

"The bad news for us is that having an adversary whose timeline runs perpendicular to ours is that every second of their timeline exists simultaneously within one second of ours, giving them a birds-eye view of everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen," he continues. "The good news, however, is that because the Commission's fixed-point perpendicular timeline is strictly linear, time travel within that point is nearly impossible. Not completely-- not if you know the secrets to using the briefcases. Few people do, but I'm one of the privileged few with the knowledge."

"How is that good for us?" Five narrows his eyes. "It sounds like they have the advantage."

"Because that means that if we haven't had agents sent after us already, that most likely means I've already succeeded in altering the Commission's timeline. If we can both make it through the paradox field without causing a collapse of the system due to our destabilization of the established linear timeline, then we can teleport ourselves right back into my quarters, moments after I left an hour ago, where my younger self is currently trapped in a pond in my bathroom. And when my agents come running after being alerted to the strange readings coming from my room, they'll find me right as rain, and I'll say, oh what a strange anomaly, it must be nothing."

He holds the cigarette out to Five in offer, like a cool uncle. "The only wrinkle is making sure our entry together is stable, and all that'll take is a little bit of math. I've heard you're very good at that."

"Oh, yeah. Easy," Five actually sounds a little bit disappointed that it was more a matter of logistics and less of having a cunning plan. But, it was probably better if things were simpler, and the less messy a project, the less things could go wrong. And Five found himself suddenly very invested in this going right. There was no fucking way he was going to stay here for 40 years, not when he would eventually get his powers back.

Taking the cigarette, Five takes a drag like an experienced addict, handing the cigarette back to Carmichael after exhaling like a dragon, smoke curling through his nostrils. "It might take me a couple of days to make sure it's sound for both of us. And it'd help if you could demonstrate how this thing works a little bit so I know what I'm working with. Think you can survive here for that long? I got a couple nicer safehouses but they're at least a day's walk in either direction."

"A _day?"_ AJ has the nerve to sound like he's complaining, as if Five hadn't been spending a year already walking for days or more. Judging by his nice suit and shiny shoes, AJ doesn't look like he does a lot of lengthy walking. The idea of walking for an entire day galls him, but as he looks around at the rinky-dink little shack with a sigh, he asks, "How much nicer?"

Five looks like he's considering, "The farther one is in the next borough. A lot nicer. Has my primary water silo and farm, and it's the only one outfitted with solar power, so... hot water if I run the heater, if you even care about that. That one is about ten hours of walking. Second one is about eight hours. It has individual rooms and pretty good food. Not as much access to water, though."

"I've had quite enough of water," AJ says, as if he isn't currently swimming in a bowl full of it, and then upon realizing what he's considering-- _seriously_ thinking about putting off their plans by some an entire day just so things are a little bit more comfy for him while a young boy does all the work for him _again?_ Shaking his head, he reaches up to take another drag from the cigarette, and flicks ash directly onto Five's floor. Judging by the state of it, he doubts Five'd mind. "No, here will be fine. We shouldn't waste time."

He picks up the briefcase and sits it on his lap, adjusting it so it's flat against his thighs. "The more we use this briefcase, the more of a chance we have of alerting the Commission to our presence here. It's hard to say how the timeline of the Commission may have already been affected, because the briefcase I have in my posession currently went missing eight years ago according to LCT, but I potentially disrupted the LCT by kidnapping my own body 16 years ago, according to right now. Getting ahold of a new body would have been extremely difficult for me, but not technically impossible. If I managed to get a body, there's a chance I could still be currently in charge, and I could have still given the order to track the missing briefcase, seeing as I didn't know at the time that I was the one to take it, in the future." 

Sighing, he takes one more drag from his cigarette and then offers the stub to Five to finish off. "However, because of the perpendicular timeline, the moment at which I hijacked my younger counterpart's body can exist simultaneous to the moment the order was given to track the briefcase, so if the timeline has yet to be altered, we could still be in trouble. All of that is to say, I can afford to use this briefcase with you just once, and we can't go anywhere drastic. The larger the jump, be it through space or time, the more of a significant reading it will put off, and if you were to suddenly go missing completely, the acquisitions department would certainly make note of your absence, and we would be reported and discovered regardless."

Taking the barely-there remnants of the cigarette, Five sucks on it greedily to finish it off before flicking the entire thing into the dirt, stubbing it out with the toe of his combat boots. "I don't need to go far. I just need to open it up to see how it works, then run it once to _feel_ how it works. You could teleport us a couple days forward or back in time from this point for all I care." As much as Five wanted to go back to his family right away, he had a feeling AJ would expect Five at least to ask, so it was a show of good faith that Five was at least pretending to work with him on this and patiently waiting to see his family again. 

After all, Five now had a deadline. A few years, Carmichael had said, and Five's powers came back to him. He could learn so much in that time from whatever futuristic society regularly employed stasis fields and handheld time travel devices. It was just a matter of biding his time.

"That we can certainly do," AJ agrees.

There's a brief pause where Five looks over at AJ, eyes lingering on him wonderingly as he silently regards the man across the cramped room from him. He sighs. "Are you gonna need anything? Like, food? Water? Do I have to... change your bowl or something?" Unsurprisingly, Reginald had never allowed the kids to have pets, and Five hadn't quite yet grown out of thinking animals were self-sufficient once they got home. But he was trying to be responsible with his new work partner, another nice sign of positive intent. "The rain's pretty heavy, so I don't think we have a chance right now, but in the morning I can try and scavenge around some of the pet supply stores, they might have food for you." If it was rude to offer him fish food, well-- Five was only 14, and a poorly socialized one at that.

Hopping away from the spool in the corner, Five heads to a corner of the room, where the top half of a female mannequin had sat stoically watching the pair discuss with wide, vacant eyes from a veritable throne in the room: A La-Z Boy recliner, the leg rest permanently extended, and the fabric not even mildewed. 

"You can sit here," Five says, taking the mannequin and shoving it into the latrine room, shutting the door quickly behind him, "It's probably more comfortable. I'd offer the couch, but it fits me better."

AJ gratefully takes the spot, if for no other reason than to keep himself out of the way. Overall he's twice the size of the boy, and takes up considerably more space in the cramped little shack, so it really just made sense to put him in the corner-- but it helps that the chair is more comfortable than the TV he'd perched on. 

"I won't need you to do anything, no," AJ says, noting the fact that it was strange Five even offered at all. He's already noticing massive differences in the boy compared to the man he knew, and he supposes it made sense considering how many decades of suffering stood between the boy in front of him and the man he knew. But it's interesting, seeing the framework of a personality he recognized with so many layers of grime and bitterness peeled away. "I'll be able to get everything I need from the cigarettes I have with me."

He glances back up towards the closed door, where the rain is still pelting the ground outside, and he feels a great deal of humming in his skin, the sensation sent up the currents and into his water so he can get a sense of his environment. He tuts, and shakes his head. 

"After we use the case for travel, I'll have to disable it so it can't be too easily tracked. If you intend to take it apart, though I certainly do hope you'll take notes on how to put it back together again. If you strand us here, no one will come for us."

"I won't need to completely take it apart," In fact, Five very much doubted he'd be able to take it apart in its entirety. Unless the fish had some sort of toolkit hidden away in his human puppet, delicate machinery like this usually required a light hand. And, if it really was some sort of futuristic device, he doubted he'd know most of the components, anyway. He approaches regardless squeezing between the thin space between wall and table to tuck in next to AJ. 

Reaching out, Five's dirty fingers pause after a milisecond, and he looks up at the fish, frowning, "Can I see?" He asks, and waits patiently until Carmichael hands it over.

Taking the case, Five kneels on the ground, setting it on the floor with no small amount of reverence. Although not afraid of the technology, he was handling it like it was something precious and sacred, slim fingers tracing across the simplistic leather exterior. "There's something about a leather case, right?" Five asks, glancing over his shoulder at Carmichael with another tight-lipped smile that just seemed to be his default, before turning back to the task at hand. 

He's thorough with his examination, if slow. He manages to get the case open with minimal struggle, exposing the intricate machinery within. It would be complete nonsense to most people, and it mostly was to Five, too-- but, as a machine for time travel himself, he recognizes the basic pieces with only minor help from AJ, questions for terminology answered politely without much other explanation, either because the man didn't know, or because it was proprietary. It didn't matter.

A power source, a spatial stabilizer array, a time destabilizer, a restabilizer... Five knew all the pieces that went into time travel, he just had them all inside of himself, to see them so carefully tucked into a suitcase was almost insulting. 

"What do you use to power them?" Five asks, tapping the lead-insulated tank holding the power supply with a finger, "Atomic? Some sort of synthesized material?"

"Nuclear," AJ answers. "Each case has its own miniature nucelar reactor powering it. Part of why it's so dangerous for them to fall into the wrong hands-- if the core is disturbed, it can leak radiation. It has backups upon backups and failsafes to prevent a leak accidentally, but a dedicated enough meddler can poison themselves to death within an hour if they don't know what they're doing." 

It's a sincere enough warning, but he doubts Five would just go jamming his fingers into the pieces without being careful even if he hadn't gotten it. He seems to understand the gravity of the situation, and what exactly he's holding in his hands. "It's dangerous, but the only power source that could create enough concentrated energy to maintain a steady destabilization stream. Before the nuclear core was implemented, we were using tesla coils, and we lost half as many agents just to the spiral of the time stream as we did to anything else. Shredded apart into atoms and scattered to the winds of time."

"Tesla coils are hard to consistently power," Five says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, "Without a steady power source, of course your people were going to get torn apart." It's a lecture he'd heard over and over again by his father, the necessary strength required before time travel could even be considered. The amount of control Five had to have over his own power before he could bring the topic up to Reginald at all was unparalleled amongst his siblings.

He doesn't feel guilty being curt now with Carmichael. They should have known better before sending people off into the time stream to be shredded apart. It was wrong of them to do that without a steady power supply. Still, Five turns back to the guts of the suitcase, fingers pressing at tubing and inspecting wires. "I think I got it. Getting in is pretty easy, but it's sealing the rift behind you that's a little messy with this thing. If it doesn't seal up just right, the bottom drops out and unbalances the whole system. I know what to look for." Five begins packing the machine up, before finally clicking the locks neatly into place, handing it to AJ by the handle.

AJ beckons the boy closer, and once he's within range to be touched, delicately takes him by the wrist, making no attempt to hide how repulsed he is by touching the filthy child at all. His grip is firm enough that when he engages the briefcase, the resulting rift claims them both, and lurches the two of them forward in time-- though not space. Using the briefcase at all was like painting a big red bullseye on them, so a small jump was their best bet at avoiding detection. 

But a jump of any size would feel the same, and it gives Five all the information he needs when he feels the rift open and take them forward. He doesn't feel it from the center of his belly like usual, but there's still something familiar about the way time opens up around them, like the flaps of an overcoat being peeled away and briefly exposing them to the harsh chill wind, before closing comfortably back around them on the other side. 

"Does that give you everything you need to know?" AJ asks as he releases Five's wrist, and immediately pulls a handkerchief out of his lapel pocket to wipe any residue the boy left behind on his skin. 

Five can't help but roll his eyes, squeezing out from beside AJ without sparing him the indignity of dragging his entire filthy torso against his arm, just for the fun of it, and he even relishes the way the man recoils with a noise of disgust. "For the record, I offered you both safehouses with showers," Five says, holding two fingers up to the fish before taking his seat on the sofa again, flipping open the given notepad and immediately jotting down a couple of thoughts.

He stands not a moment later, looking back to the door, to the makeshift windows. It seemed to hit him belatedly that there was no tumultuous crashing of thunder or lightning, and the rain slamming onto the metal roof had gone quiet, "What time did you take us to?" Five asks, climbing over the sofa to the front door, kicking the towel aside so he can yank it open. When they'd left, the towel had just begun to turn a murky brown from the water and sludge it'd been stopping. It was fully brown throughout now, a clear indicator of the time that had passed, even if they hadn't been there to watch it do so.

"Just the next day," AJ replies.

Outside, the world is quiet, outside coated with a thick layer of dirt, like it'd been more sludge and less rain that had thundered down on them last night. Five's head whips back around to look at AJ. "Will they be able to track that re-entering their dimension? There's gotta be some sort of tracker on that, right?"

"There is a tracker, yes," AJ says. "And unfortunately it isn't as simple as opening the case and disabling it. Each case leaves its own signature on the time stream when used-- more like a unique license plate number. There would be no way for us to re-enter the Commission without the signature being picked up. However, I don't believe that will be a problem if we use this case to go back 16 years in LCT time, given the fact that this case was reported missing eight years ago, LCT. Especially if we immediately disable and destroy this case, it will be recorded as a fluke, given the fact that this very same case will either be checked into the briefcase room, or in the possession of a field agent."

Five glances up at the sky, as if he was expecting some sort of divine retribution from above for their bold-faced planning. When a beat of silence passes with nothing coming down from the heavens to smite them, he shakes his head and glances back at AJ, eyebrow furrowed just the slightest bit in confused concentration. "The fact we haven't been picked up still means we get away with it, I think," Five offers, "Otherwise there's no way they wouldn't've stopped us by now, if it's really that easy to track this thing down."

"I think you're right," AJ confirms, once he finishes wiping down the sleeve that Five had so cruelly rubbed his filthy body against. _Teenagers_. "Though we shouldn't take that for granted. It would be in our best interest to work as quickly as possible, regardless. If you're willing, I think we should begin immediately." 


	3. Chapter 3

This entire event with the Handler notwithstanding, it's been a very long time since AJ actually had to roll his sleeves up in the field (metaphorically speaking, of course, this suit is very expensive and he's not about to crease it) His experience working with the Commission has been so routine for so long that he almost forgot what it felt like to engage his brain in something other than corporate infrastructure. 

It's exciting, in a way. He hasn't done anything dangerous of his own free will in a significant amount of time. Not _this_ kind of danger at least, the stock market hardly counts as life-threatening. Working against the clock, against potentially _himself_ as an adversary, knowing how dangerous he can be when he believes someone is working against his or the Commission's interest-- it lights a fire in AJ's veins he hasn't felt in years. 

He and Five nearly work around the clock. The boy hardly sleeps, and seems to have no qualm about eating and working at the same time. AJ generously shares his cigarettes whenever he has one, the nicotine providing both a calm and a boost of energy for the boy whenever his hands start to shake and his mind starts to race a little too much. 

AJ had been so detached from Five the last time he'd been aware of him. First it was in the form of reports on his desk, and a few notable moments played for him on a screen, and then he was his distant lofty boss who knew of and cared for Five just as little as any other employee. Well, perhaps not _just_ as little, he did oversee the genetic modifications that went into making Five what he was. But he wasn't exactly friends with the man. 

But actually being up close with him, being able to watch him work-- and not just that but _help_ him work, double-checking his math and referencing it against his inside knowledge with the Commission, working rapidly off of one another-- it's exhilarating. Even halfway feral, Five's mind is no less sharp, it seems to work almost as rapidly as some supercomputers that AJ has encountered, quickly extrapolating from new information and reworking just as fast every time they hit a roadblock. 

He would almost call it a privilege to witness, if he wasn't also subject to the boy's filth. That, at least, can be fixed with time. 

Their camaraderie came easy with a similar goal in mind, and it didn't entirely matter what they both wanted out of their lives individually. AJ respects that in the boy, and finds that age wasn't the source of Five's pragmatism; it had in fact always been there. He seems to care miraculously little about his prior life and the woe that had befallen him, and is now singularly focused on the task at hand, and the goals they need to accomplish to get them to their destination. It was a breath of fresh air from being stuck inside the Commission for so long, where respect was traditionally given in the form of prolonged small talk and horribly blatant ass-kissing.

If AJ found himself missing the sucking up at all, it was only in the cheap ego boost it provided. Five offered none of that to him, even having the audacity to get an annoyed clip in his voice, when his own convoluted explanations don't translate for someone who didn't literally eat and breathe time-space manipulation. But Five never complained when AJ offered a clipped word in retort, or got annoyed in return, and they settled into a miraculously _normal_ work routine. 

Five uses AJ like a reference book, asking him to cite anything from safety regulations for the equipment surrounding the Commission to security protocol regarding unsolicited travel to and from Commission space. Five didn't like to be taken by surprise, and it showed, one wall in the run-down shack covered by ripped out pieces of paper by the end of the second day. Five needed a new notebook by the third, but fortunately Five seemed to have scrounged one up from the depths of his stash, and the pages were blank if he used the backs of them.

The scrawlings branched out and outwards further as Five filled the shack with his understanding of the Commission's complicated structure. By the second day, he knew that the piece inside the briefcase that latched onto the LCT stream would need to be modified to allow for a broader flow of time through its port, both to account for their destabilization, but also any destabilization AJ might have already caused by kidnapping his own body. 

Since they have yet to both be blinked out of existence, it's worth assuming that the Commission hasn't crumbled in on itself and eliminated everyone who's ever been involved from the multiverse, but further meddling brings a greater chance for catastrophe. The modifications to the port should account for it, provided that the paradox shielding holds. 

"All we're going to need for that are the right tools, correct?" AJ asks, as he stands up to work some of the stiffness out of his body, stretching his arms one after the other across his chest and shoulders. He's not used to doing quite this much sitting in one place, even when he worked in the office he would frequently get up to work out the jitters that naturally accumulated thanks to the connection he had with his host body. Judging by the way Five looks back at him, up from the work he had sprawled across his lap, AJ sighs. "You don't have tools here."

"For this? I don't keep specialized tools in outhouses like this one, I wasn't even supposed to _be here_ this long," Five argues, brows furrowed in frustration. He didn't like the look AJ was giving him-- it was miraculous a fish could emote, and maybe Five had just gone a little crazy from a year of isolation, but he could _feel_ the disappointment radiating out of those tiny gold eyes. It made Five bristle indignantly, an ages-old competitive streak rearing its ugly head again.

Five is struck for a moment by the feeling. It hit him right in the chest like it used to, and he has to roll his eyes at himself. Some things didn't change, apparently. 

"I could probably salvage something from the scrap yard," Five says with a heavy sigh, setting his papers on the ground in front of him as he runs a hand through his hair, "If I'm smart, I can probably weld a couple of things together, too... not like I have to save the gas for anything..." Words turned more into thoughts than intentional speech, Five goes quiet as he thinks through his options, before a dull rumble catches his attention in the resulting silence. He'd think it was thunder if Five didn't know any better, and if the door wasn't wide open to let in the cross breeze, the sky its usual murky blue, but otherwise clear of clouds. 

Over time the rumbling seems to get louder and closer, before the cans scattered across Five's counters and floor begin to rattle loudly rumbling with the earth as the ground begins to shake under their feet. 

Five is on his feet immediately, standing at attention as the metal walls rock uneasily on either side of them, the door banging shut, then swinging open freely, the ground still moving beneath their feet. "Out, out!" Five snaps, grabbing the briefcase and shoving it into AJ's hands, pushing at his arm to get him out the door urgently, "This place isn't earthquake stable, we can't let the walls collapse on us--" he's grabbing things, quickly, snapping back at AJ, " _Go!"_

If Five hadn't given AJ such clear instructions, the fish would have just locked up completely. In all his decades of being alive, he's never had to deal with an _earthquake_. Where would he have encountered an earthquake? The Commission was based in Canada, it's not like they had an abundance of fault lines near the campus, and he hardly ever left the grounds considering his appearance. It's hard to just go walking down the street when you're a goldfish sitting atop a man. 

Clutching the briefcase to his chest, AJ watches in horror as a building far away in the distance just collapses as if in slow motion, so huge and so distant that it truly does seem to come down at half speed, a massive dust cloud already whipping up as the ground beneath his feet trembles and shakes. 

"Go _WHERE?!"_ he yelps at Five. Despite his centuries and his wisdom and his experience, he's woefully underprepared for an apocalyptic landscape, and looks now to a little boy as the ultimate authority for how to survive.

"OUT! The DOOR!" Five roars as he hefts his duffel bag over his shoulder, practically vaulting over the table that was shuddering and tipping sideways. He grabs onto AJ's elbow, yanking him in front of him and shoving the man forward out the door, as a loud, rattling crash sounds from inside. As Five's kitchen falls apart, the boy in question ducks through the front door just as it tips back and shuts with a slam.

Where AJ can't think, Five sure as shit can. He pushes and shoves AJ into the dusty clearing of the junkyard, where around them piles of debris begin to quiver and shake, and the rumbling turns almost violent. A groaning creak, a crackling, splintering sound, and the ground under their very feet begins to shift and convulse. Five quickly runs across the clearing to a large, stable-looking mound. but the shaking is getting worse by the minute, and AJ's fight or flight response seems stuck in the 'buffering' space. Rooted to the spot, Five can only turn around to see AJ not on his heel, shouting loudly, "JUMP OVER HERE!" With a full-armed wave that takes Five's entire body.

With all the dignity and grace of a man who's clearly never had to navigate his own body in a dire situation, AJ breaks into a loping jog with long strides, holding the briefcase tucked under one arm protectively. He vaults over a fallen piece of debris with one hand, and satisfied that he finally seems to have gotten the lead out, Five turns and starts darting through the debris like he's done this a hundred times. AJ realizes that he probably has. 

But as soon as his shoes touch down on the other side of the rubble, something sinks. As if the concrete is suddenly made of sand, he feels it give way under his soles, and he looks down in time to see the ground open up like a mouth, concrete and pipes all breaking apart as the earth itself dissolves into a great sinkhole. 

AJ yelps as he slides down the incline, luckily close enough to the side as the earth split that he didn't suffer a direct plummet, and as sand and dirt and silt fill his shoes and trousers and pockets, he feels a great chunk of concrete hit the back of his tank, right where it meets the metal ring that locks it in place. He instinctively throws a hand back to try and check for a crack in the glass or weakness in the connection holding his tank and water source in place, swimming frantically in a circle in his bowl just in time for his knees to hit a pipe, and the impact hurts all the way up to his eyeballs. 

He feels the handle of the briefcase leave his fingertips, and though he tries to catch it in time, it flies from his grasp and bounces off a jagged piece of concrete before landing on the ground, open like a book, and AJ goes rolling down the side of the sinkhole beside it, with the ground still shaking all around him, as if it's a great maw threatening to chomp down on him for good. 

"What are you doing?!" Five's shout is immediate and frantic above AJ's head, and he looks up in time to see Five's face poking over the side of the sink hole, "I told you to jump over here, not jump into the hole!"

"I didn't do it on _PURPOSE!"_ AJ squawks. 

"We have to get you out of here before it collapses," Five says immediately, and his tone is all business. Maybe he wasn't the best at bedside manner, but the way he spoke already seemed to imply he had an idea-- and knowing Five, that meant he had at least four of them.

Almost instantly afterwards, a long cast of absolutely filthy rope throws itself over the edge, Five's face appearing beside it again, "Tie that around your waist! With your bowl, there's a chance I could dig you out before the glass or your body succumbs to the pressure if the sinkhole collapses before we can get there, and I'll need the rope to find you," and before AJ can argue how grim a picture that paints, Five is gone again, back over the edge, working on Plan A so they don't have to resort to Plan D, leaving AJ to tie himself around the waist and wait in the sinkhole, clutching the pieces of broken briefcase together lest they lose anything important in the ground still shaking and creaking-- in fact it was worse now, being in the hole, everything was shaking around him.

Five was back after what felt like an agonizingly long amount of time. It was really only half a minute, if that, just long enough for Five to grab a full door, one that looked like it had once been a set of two. It was massive and thick, intricately carved and-- judging by the way Five was dragging it behind him and grunting as he pulled it-- heavy as hell. 

It drops next to the pit with one final snarl from Five, who stands up and ignores the grimace of pain crossing his face. His eyes are set in a way AJ can remember, the steely determination that must have been forged within those first few months of the apocalypse, except now the brunt of that gaze is being given to AJ, as Five drops to his knees and shoves the massive door into the hole, watching the corner dip, then sink, then hit the bottom and form a ramp from ground to lip.

A brief pause in the shaking has Five looking up, wild-eyed and panting, "Now! Up the door!" He says, snapping his fingers and pointing. It'd be rude if the circumstances weren't quite so dire.

"How did you LIFT that?!" AJ certainly isn't complaining, but he does have questions, as he fits the toe of his shoes into the grooves on the door and vaults himself up-- only to fail to catch his weight on the top of the door and slip back down. He glances down at the briefcase under his arm, preventing him from being able to grab hold with both hands and haul himself out, and then back up at Five, still shouting for him to hurry up. 

There's a very real possibility that if he throws the case up to Five's level, the only thing between Five and a trip to wherever he wants to go, he'll simply grab it and run, and leave AJ to fend for himself in this earthquake. Which is to say: he'll leave him to die, because AJ is about as equipped to take care of himself in an earthquake as he is to flap his arms hard enough to fly. 

But what's the alternative? Stay here at the bottom of the hole, clutching the briefcase until the whole thing caves in on him and he dies? That's not how his story is going to end, not a chance. So with a heave, he tosses the case with all his might so it lands on the ground beside Five, and then takes another leap at the door, this time catching the edge with both hands and using it to scramble up to solid ground. 

Rolling up to lay flat on the asphalt, AJ doesn't have the time to rest. He knows they have to get up and move, but this much exertion on an electromagnetic connection that's 17 years out of date is seriously winding him already, putting enormous strain on his tiny body. He's going to need one hell of a tune-up, once they're finally back at the Commission. 

Once he catches his breath, AJ is able to see the lengths Five truly had gone through in a short amount of time: And the lengths he was still going through, while he pants on the ground.

The rope tied around AJ's waist looked like it'd been connected to some rudimentary pulley system over a nearby bar, presumably in case Five had actually had to rely on the rope to help AJ out. Now that he was out, Five was grabbing a red racer wagon and delicately wedging the briefcase in amongst what supplies he'd managed to scavenge, coming back to help AJ yank the knot of his rope free and drop it to the ground, then getting an arm under the man's and hoisting him up. He can see where he might have not been useless dragging the door, his grip on AJ like iron and carrying much more of his weight than would otherwise be expected of a boy his size, even if AJ did have to do most of the work himself. 

"There's a clearing down this hill," Five says, voice sharp, "We get there, we lay low, we wait for the shaking to stop. That's all we can do, can you walk?" Five says urgently as nearby another building collapses into rubble, and Five's head snaps up to watch its descent.

"I can walk!" AJ says with a little more force than was strictly necessary-- but god damn it, he's _scared_. 

He feels a strange instinct to _protect_ Five, as if there's a damn thing he could do that the boy wouldn't be capable of handling himself. It's almost a guarantee that anything AJ could do in a situation as dire as this one would only hinder the boy's capable plans. He keeps pace beside him, keeping one eye on the briefcase to make sure it doesn't bounce out of the wagon as they dart under a caved-in overpass, into a much more open area, where there's significantly less worry about anything toppling over on top of them and squashing them flat. 

Exhausted, AJ drops to his knees in the dry grass beside the highway, spinning frantically in his bowl. "That was-- that was INSANE--" he kneels up, filthy and bedraggled and tired, and looks up towards Five, his black and gold eyes shining. "You were incredible-- I'd seen the reports, but-- my word, and only 14 years old--" He's babbling, too much adrenaline built up in his tiny body to be healthy. His bowl feels suddenly too small, he feels like he could swim a mile at mach speed and still not be tired, and he spins around his bowl restlessly to try and expend some of the energy. 

Five remains standing for a second longer, not saying anything as he looks back up at the hill as the sinkhole groans further open, and what was left of his shack plummets into the chasm left behind, the entire pile of junk Five had painstakingly dug out collapsing all at once, and looking like no one had ever been there at all. He frowns then, turning to his wagon and digging into a bag at the top for a canteen of water, which he cracks open and takes a long drink from, drips of water leaving lines of clean skin down his chin where droplets fell from his hungry mouth.

A heavy gasp leaves him when he finishes, and he too collapses onto the ground not a second later to take his own turn breathing as the rumbling continues. But out here it's much less severe, the ground stabilized and flat, a few thick, heavy trees rooting the earth together while just a short ways away the entire world seemed to crumble. 

"When I first got here," Five explains with a voice that sounds more like gravel, taking another drink, those eyes still focused on his old safe house behind them, "I got stuck in one of those sink holes, but it was closer to the beach. I only got out because I managed to dig myself out faster than the dirt and shit could fill the hole. I should have seen this one coming." He actually looks angry with himself, looking at the sky with a grim expression. "We'll have to find cover soon. Earthquakes never come alone," He explains, even as the rumbling finally, blissfully seems to be dying down. 

Without nary a grimace or a scowl, Five pushes himself back to his feet and takes another long drink of water, shoving the bottle back on the top of the stack, "Fortunately, I have another emergency shelter about an hour walk away. If we can get there we should be okay, but it'll be tight," Watching the fish race in his bowl, Five almost sounds amused when he asks, "Good to go?"

"What do you mean, earthquakes never come alone? Do they invite company?" AJ says, sounding at once exhilarated and exhausted as he staggers up to his feet. However, even as he asks it, he feels a sudden cold gale at his back, and he spins in his bowl to look behind them. 

Moving swiftly through the ruined city comes the result of the earthquake destabilizing and collapsing so many buildings, a massive and dark cloud of dust and debris is churning towards them, spilling forward like a great belt of fog made entirely of soot and tiny pieces of concrete that will easily strip the skin from their bodies in seconds, if they stand out in the open when it arrives. 

And it is approaching, _fast_. 

"Ah. That's what you meant," AJ sounds defeated as he looks at the great black cloud. They're standing out in the middle of the open, the same _open_ they'd turned to in order to survive the last disaster would spell their demise, with this one. How in the hell Five managed to survive 40 years of this is mind boggling, AJ has barely lasted four days and there's a grim part of him that already wants to give up. 

"We don't have to run, but we do have to go now," Five agrees, and is already beginning, grabbing the handle of the wagon and beginning to pull. Despite the uneven, awkward terrain, Five seems to manage it fine-- in fact, it definitely looks like he's pulled this wagon through much worse conditions, and if the reinforced, thick wheels he custom installed were any indication, that's exactly what it was for. 

And poor AJ, Five's idea of 'not running' was still awful close to running. For all he was barely scraping 5'5 currently, Five's strides were surprisingly long and quick, clearly utilizing every inch of his leg to get him as far as possible, as fast as possible. At times he even seems to half-skip over obstacles, brute forcing his way over debris and cars by climbing over them and pushing the wagon underneath, or even yanking the wagon up with him, when AJ decides to help him lift the back end up and over. It's easier with two people, and they ultimately do make better time than just Five traveling alone.

Meanwhile at their backs, the wind continues to blow, the sky beginning to entirely cloud over with dark, sinister looking clouds. It could be rain if they both didn't already know better, and in the distance there's still the occasional, eerie crumbling sound of the outcropping turning to rubble behind them.

"Five, I don't think we're going to make it," AJ says frantically. While he doesn't sound out of breath, since he doesn't _breathe_ , exactly, there's still a certain breathless sort of quality to his voice, where it's been pinched by fear. He keeps looking behind them at the approaching storm, which only seems to pick up in speed and girth with each passing moment. 

There are certainly some small spots they could use as an emergency shelter, particularly tall pieces of rubble, a billboard that had toppled over and could function as a big metal tent in an emergency, a twisted piece of a collapsed highway overpass that they could shimmy behind-- but none of it would be as ideal or as airtight as a proper safe house. 

But the decision might be robbed from them, if the storm at their heels picks up much more speed. It might not be their call anymore, how they escape from the wind beating at their backs, already flicking little specks of debris at them like a hundred biting ants. It's uncomfortable already, and AJ can't even imagine how much worse it's going to get. 

Looking over his shoulder, Five's eyes narrow into the storm, and he grabs the goggles that spent most of their time perched on the top of his head or slung low around his neck. He never was without them, even having slept in them for the last three nights, and it seemed like this instance was exactly why; being left without visibility after a catastrophe was just not an option if he wanted to stay alive. Five settles them on his face now, blinking grit out of his eyes to see the storm better, then adjust.

He could make this run if it was just him, Five knew it. He'd done it before, when Earthquakes hit and he'd had to evacuate. Five knew exactly how long each of his safehouses were from one another, both at an unburdened sprint and at a very burdened trudge, but he didn't know how to account for another person. Maybe they spent more time at the sinkhole than he thought they had, the storm had already been approaching... there were too many factors for Five to ruminate and scold himself over now, when there was one thing he did know.

They _weren't_ going to make it. AJ was right. It was already getting hard for Five to breathe, and he pulls a scarf around his nose and mouth, before he grabs the wagon and shoves it into the open back seat of an abandoned car on the road, closing the doors quickly before grabbing AJ's arm and yanking him to the side. Without the wagon, they can move quicker.

"We're looking for a structure we can seal with whatever we can find! Four walls, minimal windows and doors! Should just be dust, but might be larger pieces of debris if the wind gets bad, so it needs to be able to take a hit. Try and find brick and concrete, maybe an overturned truck if you can! Don't lose eyesight with me and I won't with you, we need to find a place, fast, got it?" And with a squeeze the boy is gone like a shot, taking off into the surrounding ruins in search of a haven, his little head just barely visible trotting through the maze of detritus.

The details of how AJ got himself into a situation where he's being ordered around by a 14 year old are lost on him, right now all the fish can think is to do exactly as the boy says without question. He's proven how incredibly capable he is so far, and AJ knows if there's any surviving this, it's by doing everything Five says to the letter. 

The wind is picking up, and luckily AJ doesn't have to worry about visibility or breathing through his protective tank, but he knows that Five does, and there's a flash of real fear for a moment as the sky darkens further still that he's going to lose track of Five, and he won't be able to find his way back to the wagon with the briefcase, and then he'll just be stuck here forever. 

He cuts off that catastrophic line of thinking at the pass, forcing the panic aside as he crawls over the edge of a broken and twisted-up piece of highway, feeling quite like a wild animal as he does so, and then he catches sight of the perfect shelter. A school bus lying on its side up against the edge of a short concrete drop, like it had been knocked over the edge by the blast that ruined the world. The back door is hanging open, revealing the mess of seats that the inside has become, but at least it would mean they'd have somewhere soft to sit while they waited for the storm to pass. 

Whirling around, he waves his arms over his head and shouts, "FIVE! I found something!"

Five was much closer than AJ thought he was, considering Five pops up not a second later about 10 yards away by a large dumpster-- proving that for all his panic, at least Five had remembered to keep an eye on AJ, even if he'd forgotten to do the same. His head whips around at the shouting and he scurries over like a rat, eyes narrowed behind his goggles, breathing obviously labored.

"That'll work," Five says resolutely, clapping AJ on the arm. It quickly turns into a push, though, as Five urges the man into the bus, helping him climb awkwardly in before scuttling on himself, crawling over trash and chairs that had been strewn about whenever the bus had landed here in the first place. Painfully they manage to pull up and shut the door together, Five grabbing onto the door initially and AJ lending his strength when a gust of wind rushes up the cliff and threatens to take Five and the door with it.

Once they get it closed to the point where Five hears it click shut and it stays there, Five begins climbing like a kid on a jungle gym. The lean, taut muscles in his arms strain as he shuts as many of the windows as possible, balanced precariously on seats and stretching just so he can reach, "Follow behind me and stuff whatever you can against the windows if you see any cracks. There's-- fuck-- here."

With a tearing sound, Five tears off the lower half of his shirt, handing it to AJ without a second thought. He was wearing layers though, clearly, his shirt half t-shirt, half dingy undershirt. He didn't seem to care, still struggling just to close the windows at all, many of them jammed up from a year of decomposing in an apocalyptic waste.

AJ crams the cloth into one of the windows to cover it, and then pulls a small pocket knife out of one of the seemingly limitless pockets inside his blazer, and starts slicing the seams of some of the cloth seats so he can pull off the seat covers from the rotten foam cushions, tossing them to Five one by one so he can quickly and easily cover every window without having to strip down to his knickers to do so. 

It's darker than ever inside the bus, now with the sky darkened by the storm and the windows over their heads blocked out to boot, but before Five has a chance to worry about that, AJ's tank suddenly lights up from the inside, providing a soft blue glow that sends peaceful waving lines across the interior of the whole bus, like being inside the walkway of an aquarium. 

"Are you alright?" AJ asks as the wind starts to properly pick up and whistle outside. They can feel some of the wind buffet the top edge of the bus, where it nearly clears the short cliff's edge, but there's just enough rocky clearance that the bus won't be tossed around by the gale. "Are you hurt at all?"

Five's head jerks up at the light, and for a second he stares at the walls, where the glimmering reflection of light casts one particular wave in high relief. He stares at it as if transfixed, enamored with the spot, before he looks down and over to AJ, finally hearing him speak where before his brain hadn't before seemed to realize what he was saying. 

Goggles shoved back onto his forehead and the fabric obscuring his nose and mouth back around his neck, Five's face does bear the proof of their concern with the storm: Large black circles of dust ringed his eyes where the goggles had stopped the dust from getting in, and his cheek bore two thin cuts, no longer than his pinkie. "Huh? I'm fine," Five grunts, patting himself down and pulling his canteen from the clip at his hip, as well as taking out a small package of baby wipes.

He doesn't seem to even realize he's injured when he wipes his face, so when it stings after a hard scrub, Five hisses and looks down at the baby wipe like it had betrayed him."Am I bleeding?" He asks incredulously, staring at the coppery, brownish-red smear on the wipe his cheek left behind, amongst a lot of dirt.

"Here, let me," AJ takes the wipe from Five's hand and tips his chin up, turning his face from side to side as he scrubs away the dirt and grime from his skin. He's tender with the shallow cuts, which look more like a thousand tiny pinpricks than proper slices with a knife might, a million little punctures decorating his cheeks under his eyes in two thin crescent shapes. 

AJ pulls out a new wipe when the one he's using becomes too saturated with filth, determined to clean Five's entire face now that he has the chance-- and Five melts into it like a kitten. AJ can't blame him, he hasn't had anyone touch him in _any_ capacity for over a year. He can't imagine what kind of touch starvation he must be feeling right now. 

"There. Clean as a whistle," AJ says once the light illuminating Five's face gives him a clear view of his clean, if slightly damp skin, turning his face from side to side again with the hold on his chin. There's a distinct line between his face and neck, where AJ hadn't bothered venturing, but he figures even if he did wipe it down, his neck would just get dirty again just from the grime that rubs off on it from his clothes. 

Five touches his face like it was a new toy, dirty fingers no doubt already muddying up the first proper clear patch he's had in well over a year, "Normally I'd say to go easy on the wipes, but I guess it doesn't matter," Five tells AJ, finally taking a seat. When he does, his entire body seems to collapse into the spot, shoulders going slack, entire body leaning heavy against the seat to the side of him. 

Water bottle dragged into his lap, Five opens the cap and takes a few tentative sips, spitting out the first couple as the dust had managed to worm its way in through the tiny openings in the bottle, creating a thin film across the top. Once he got to water, though, Five drinks like a man dying, adams apple bobbing as he closes his eyes and drinks until he has to gasp for air, followed by a huge sigh of relief. 

"Are you? Okay?" Five asks roughly, only then seeming to remember his manners. Outside, the wind howls, but the windows and their barriers hold, the bus not filling with dust. "It's good no dust or anything got into your--" Five gestures to the speaker at the front of AJ's helmet, which also served to deliver the smoke from his cigarettes into his lungs, "--That would have been really bad."

"My port?" AJ reaches up to touch the little filter at the front of his tank. "Oh no, you wouldn't have to worry about that. I've full control over all of my body's functions, including this. Your concern is touching."

The storm is properly overhead now, rattling the bus with its highspeed winds, threatening to break in the windows. AJ has never been in a storm like this one before, where the penalty for their lack of safety would have been death. At least, immediate death for Five-- for AJ it would have meant the death of his host body, which would leave him in his bowl, trapped and unable to move for however long it took him to starve to death. 

He shudders, just thinking of how awful it could have been. He feels goose bumps raise on his arms, and for a second he thinks that it's because of the horror-- but then he realizes the sensation is too uniform over his body. He feels the hairs on the back of his host's neck raise, and prickle all down his spine and legs-- and when he looks over, Five's hair, heavy with grease as it is, floats up slightly in the air. 

AJ might not be experienced in storms, but he knows about them academically, and he knows what it looks like when lightning is about to strike. The air is supercharged with electricity, and here they are, sitting in a big tin can. AJ only has seconds to think-- if the bus is struck, Five would be fried alive in an instant. He has electrical inhibitors in his tank, so he would be fine, but Five is so small, and there's no guarantee he survives this, now that AJ has interrupted the path of his timeline. 

So he grabs the handle of the door in one hand, throws it open against the ground with a loud bang, grabs Five by the front of his shirts and throws him through the open door like a lawn dart. He lands on the hard ground with a thud, sheltered from the worst of the wind and dust thanks to the concrete outcropping beside him, but before he even has time to yell at AJ for what could have easily been a death sentence, he watches as a massive bolt of white lightning streaks down from the sky and makes contact with the bus. 

AJ disappears from the doorway as he falls backwards, the energy connecting with his host and instantly shorting out the connection between his body and brain. He lands on a cushion, thankfully, so his tank doesn't shatter, but his body is left twitching with the electric shock, and his actual physical body in his tank is stunned with the residual energy that made it into his tank for a split second before the failsafe kicked in to protect him. That split second is all it took to daze him though, leaving him spinning in a circle belly-up in his bowl as he fights to regain control of his fins. 

Five had curled onto his side to absorb the impact of the fall, pulling his goggles down and scarf back up to cover his face before he swallowed debris. He can only look up at the bus for so long, the charred, smoking strike mark whipping embers up into the winds. Five can only squint, unable to see AJ on the ground and twitching, and unable to stand out under the cliff for too long without the dust burning rashes into his skin.

"STAY THERE!" Five shouts, praying that AJ is alive and able to hear him over the roar of the winds. With his hands cupped around his mouth, Five can feel the dirt and whatever else chafing against the back of his hands and wrists. He can ignore the stinging, though, if it means he can get a message to the other, "I'LL REACH YOU ONCE THIS SETTLES. _DON'T DIE!"_

Maybe it wasn't the most optimistic way to sign off, but as he settles with his back pressed as far back into the wall as possible and wraps his arms around his knees, Five has to wonder if it might not be a better warning for himself. Tucking his face into his knees and bracing for the long haul, Five closes his eyes and waits out the storm.

AJ, as it turns out, doesn't have a choice whether or not he'll "stay there" as his worst fears are realized. He waits and waits and waits for his body to come back online, long after he's regained motor functions of his fins and is able to right himself in his bowl. He can hear the storm still raging overhead, Five's voice ringing in his ears, but when he tries to shout back for the boy, he hears only his own voice echoing through the water in his bowl. 

His speakers are totally dead, which is not a good sign. The lights are out in the base as well, all power cut between his host and his tank. He's inert, left to float in a tiny bowl connected to a lifeless husk that he doesn't even have the connection to tell whether it's alive or not. His worst nightmare would be watching his host slowly decompose and rot away into nothing-- as if he would even live that long without food. 

He has no way of knowing if Five is even alive, or if he'd killed him by throwing him out of the bus. He would have died absolutely within the walls if AJ hadn't tossed him out, that much is certain, but he doesn't know if he's survived the wind, either. The fear makes his tiny heard pound in his chest, and he swims in nervous circles around his bowl as the storm slowly, steadily passes over them, the sky gradually turning lighter as the wind dies down. 

It's orange outside by the time the storm completely clears, and Five shakes dust out of his hair as he slowly, achingly unfurls himself from inside his little cave. Miraculously, incredibly, he'd been sheltered from the worst of the winds. He's covered in a sheet of sand and dirt, but he manages to dust it off pretty easily, and aside from the rashes up his hands and arms from his brief stint outside, he was unmarked by the adventure. 

Knowing their time is limited, that he needs to collect to AJ and get to a home before nightfall, Five ignores his aching, screaming muscles as he climbs to his feet and looks at the bus, dread settling in his stomach. He can still see smoke curling off of it in sluggish, heavy plumes, now only lightly carried by the breeze. The windows had been blown out, two of the tires popped, and a massive, ugly hole torn in the top. Dust had poured in through the hole and filled the front half of the bus like a dune. 

"Carmichael?" Five asks, raising his voice as he steps closer to the bus, as if the thing might come to life and attack him. He crouches, stepping carefully to avoid surprise hotspots as he makes his way back to the bus, where he sees one crisp now-scuffed, business shoe. "AJ?" He asks, nudging the shoe. When the man doesn't respond, Five feels his heart immediately leap into his throat. "AJ?!" 

Five's voice fringes on being shrill as he leaps up and over the seats, climbing past them to get to AJ's bowl-head. There's a decent layer of dust on his glass, and Five hastily brushes it off, careful to avoid his cogs despite AJ's earlier insistence that it didn't matter, "Hey, you awake? You okay? Your tank's gotta be insulated or something, right?" Five taps the tank, grunting as he lifts AJ's prone upper half to an upright, seated position, squinting into the water and hoping he doesn't see a dead goldfish.

It's hard to see him in the dark, but there's a definite flash of white and gold fins as AJ gives a little twirl in the tank to let Five know he is, indeed, alive. Five exhales in relief, before hearing a tiny, muffled noise from inside the bowl, and when he sees AJ's mouth moving, he realizes he's actually talking. Which means his voice comes from his mouth and is only amplified by the speakers, and not some kind of telepathic connection. 

Five has to press his ear directly to the glass in order to hear his voice at all, and even then it's small and muffled between the water and the glass insulating it. "I'm fine, but I can't move my body. Check if it's alive, check if it has a pulse, please!" 

AJ's body is limp, but now that Five is within touching distance, he can see for sure that this is actually a _human_ body. Growing up with a very humanoid robot, who could easily be mistaken for human at a glance, he's intimately familiar with the difference in texture between real and synthetic skin. There's no rubberiness or plasticky quality to AJ's skin when he pushes up his sleeve in order to check his pulse in his wrist, and sure enough after holding his breath for a moment, he's able to feel the pulse of an actual beating heart pumping against his fingertips. He even sees one of AJ's fingers twitch at the stimulation to the nerves on his wrist. 

"It's alive!" Five says, raising his voice, not sure if the muffled quality works both ways. He knows he's never been able to hear anything under water. With a little extra effort, he manages to get AJ up all the way, and even manages to line the bowl up with the stream of light from the ripped-open roof. Five continues to dust AJ off, "Okay, can we hook you guys back up somehow? How did you control the body in the first place?" He asks, inspecting the body. He's as ginger with it as possible, not wanting to hurt the living-breathing thing he was holding.

"There's a connection in the base of my tank, a circuit board that acts as an amplifier," AJ answers, speaking as loudly and clearly as possible so Five can hear him through the glass. "It enables me to control the body with thought waves, by connecting the base to the body's nervous system and spinal cord. I believe the surge of electricity shorted out the connection-- if the body is still alive, then it must just be a wiring issue. There might have been some damage to the connection, or if we're lucky it's just a matter of opening the back and flipping the switch. You'll need a screwdriver to get into it, however."

Five groans loudly at that. Grinding the heel of his hand into his forehead, his mouth twists into a frown, "I don't have a..." There were only two places where he had screwdrivers nearby. His primary bases, the one he had tried to get AJ to go to willingly so many days ago. How annoying that they were destined to arrive there, regardless. Something in his chest hardens at the task in front of them. Well, _him_.

Reginald had often said their lives were not destined to be easy. If they wanted easy, Hargeeves said, it might be best to end this life and try again in the next one: a grim thing to say to a batch of students, but the man had never been known for his civility. Either way, Five didn't back down from any challenge. For a second Five fusses, making sure AJ at least has the dignity of being sat upright, balanced against the wall so he doesn't hurt his body further by falling over.

"Okay, I need to get the wagon," Five says, looking at the sky. It was quickly turning copper, already darkened at the edges of the horizon, "I'll be right back."

"Wait," AJ says quickly, the idea of just being left again eating at him in an instant as soon as it's suggested. Five actually pauses to look at him, but AJ feels woefully underprepared to make any sort of argument. It's getting dark, sure, but that wagon contains all of their supplies, including the briefcase, and anything Five could have for dinner. AJ knows the boy's schedule intimately at this point, and knows he's yet to eat since breakfast, and he just expended a great deal of energy getting the two of them to this point so he really _does_ need to eat. 

But god damn it if AJ isn't scared of the idea of being left alone again, especially now that it's getting dark. He doesn't know how far away the stashed wagon is, or how long it would take for Five to get it, or if he'd get lost or hurt somehow out there and leave AJ all alone to die a slow, horrific death. 

It's not just him, though. He can see in the heavy hood of Five's eyes and the tremble in his muscles that the boy is absolutely _exhausted_. He can't blame him, _he's_ exhausted, and technically he hasn't done anything physical. He can feel the fatigue in his host if they're connected, but he doesn't even have that excuse right now. He's nothing but a fish in a bowl. Five, on the other hand, looks like he's about to keel over if he tries to climb back out of the bus. 

"Not tonight," AJ finally says, firmly. "It's getting dark. Stay here."

"It's just back on the highway," Five argues, shaking his head. The more time they spend bickering, the more light he's wasting-- and predictably, he'd hoped they'd be in an alternate shelter, safe by now... so of course he hadn't thought to bring his mounted flashlight. Five berates himself for his lack of preparation. One could make the case that he was being too hard on himself-- but if this man was here because of who Five was after 40 years in this place, Five had a lot of expectations to live up to, and fast.

Which involved being prepared. Which Five wasn't. It was embarrassing, it was frustrating-- and it was only made worse by the unpredictable earthquake, followed by dust storm-turned static electricity storm. Things in the apocalypse usually just unraveled that way. It was one thing surviving it on his own, Five was relatively sturdy on his own volition, but surviving with an audience was worse. 

So he wanted to go. He _needed_ to go. Five pulls away from AJ and begins to climb out of the bus again, one hand slipping and shaking and weak on the edge of the wall, the minimal strength left in his arms making him shake with the effort it took to do just that.

Maybe it's the fact that AJ's used to being listened to and obeyed without question within the Commission (with the recent exception of the Handler) or maybe it's the strange, tugging sensation of protection he feels instinctively for the boy thanks to his age-- or maybe it really is just fear clawing at his throat, but when Five just tells him "no" and turns around to disobey, something in AJ's chest flares hotly with anger. 

"Number Five," he barks, louder than he should be able to with just his voice in the glass tank. "I didn't suggest it as a subject for _debate_. Don't forget that I'm here to rescue you, and I can't very well do that if you go gallivanting off into the night while I'm paralyzed, and you slip and break your neck on a piece of rubble because you're so dehydrated and fatigued that you can't open a blasted door. _Sit_ _down_ , finish your bottle of water, and get some sleep. Nobody is going to steal the wagon in the night, it'll be there in the morning."

Five's head snaps to look at AJ like he's seeing him for the first time, leaning back like he had a punch thrown at him and finally-- after a long, unbroken silence-- dropping his arm from the door and sinking back into the chair next to the man. He really was shaking, this close he could _see_ Five shake for himself, the faintest tremor of exhaustion in his fingers as he smooths them down over his thighs and knees.

"I'd never do that, you know," Five argues petulantly, looking straight ahead at the wall in front of them. He hadn't looked at AJ since he'd been barked at, the familiar feeling of falling into line making him feel almost nostalgic for his family and siblings. After a year of having to make all the decisions, having control taken out of his hands by an adult for once was almost _nice_. His body was singing at the opportunity to rest, he could feel it in the way his muscles began to pulse and ache. "Fall and break my neck because I was tired. I'd never do that. I'd sleep on the road before I died from falling out here."

"Don't argue with me," AJ says, though it's with considerably less heat than before as Five starts to collect the downed cushions that the fish had stripped before to block out the windows, gathering them into a comfortable sort of nest for him to collapse onto. It's not quite as nice as his couch, it's considerably more mildewed, but Five knows at this point that beggars can't be choosers. 

He's vindicated at least when he hears Five snoring within seconds of being horizontal, exhaustion claiming him in a heartbeat. AJ floats in his tank watching him sleep for a long time as the sunlight stretches longer and longer lines across the purpling sky, until finally the last of the light chokes out and the shubunkin drifts off to sleep, himself. 


	4. Chapter 4

Despite the rush of the previous day, the overexertion of energy expended, and the fact that Five hadn't eaten except some paltry stale bread earlier that day, the boy is up at dawn. Call it muscle memory, or call it strict regimented routine, Five at least has a hard time getting out of bed, the cushions and floor more comfortable than some of his harder safe houses were. But he wakes up, takes stock of the unconscious body of AJ (Both to make sure his connection with his body hadn't come back online overnight, and to make sure the body was _alive_ still, at all) and satisfied with the safety of his companion, slips back out the door and into the crisp, morning air.

Arguably, morning was the best time of day in the apocalypse. For a second, just a second, he can convince himself that it's simply morning on a hot Summer's day. The air is dry and cool, the heat from the previous day killed by the cold of the night before, but with the sun already high in the sky, the ground and air was quickly beginning to warm back up. 

But, as Five has tried to explain last night, the wagon wasn't super far away. Five liked to keep his things nearby, hoarding resources and keeping close, close tabs on them to avoid losing them. Not going and getting the wagon last night had been difficult, to say the least, not least of all because he was starving. Weaving through the ruined city on either side of the highway overpass, Five eventually manages to find a ramp up that wouldn't require him to lift and carry the wagon too many times, knowing already that he wouldn't have the strength to after last night.

Hell, he was already not looking forward to the walk ahead. His stomach clenched unpleasantly and gurgled achingly the closer and closer to the wagon he got, pulling himself stubbornly over walls and gritting his teeth as the sun began to finally burst through the cloud layer, burning into his eyes. 

When he finds it, still shoved into the car and untouched like the image of perfection, Five takes a minute to tear into the supplies he'd stashed there. Rationalizing that he may as well eat now while he can, and if they were going to his nicer safe house anyway he had almost two weeks of rations in there. He didn't really _need_ to save this at all. So he takes a break to finish his bottle of water and crack into another canteen, opening cans with his fingers and eating whatever he had. This was a creamed corn and off-brand Spam morning, two delicacies he would have traditionally saved to actually cook into something really good.

But he's too hungry to think about building a fire now, and he has AJ to get back to. After a brief rest that involves Five drastically paring down the contents of the wagon so he'll actually be able to pull AJ once he gets there, Five is back on the road, little red racer behind him with the briefcase now taking up most of the space, alongside a few extra cans of food for the trip, and both of Five's back up canteens-- one he'd already drank about half of, the other he'd have to be more sparing with. Five reaches the bus again when the air is just beginning to properly feel like the Waste he knew, and he can already tell it's going to be a hot one.

Climbing onto the bus, Five ducks his head as he stands above AJ, straddling the aisle as he stands with one foot on either side of the seats, giving him an extra few feet of height which he uses to properly loom over the sleeping fish, hoping he was awake on his own... and only after realizing he wasn't does Five gently tap on the glass to wake him. 

"Hey, we gotta start early today," Five says, trying to be as nice about it as possible, still not sure how rude tapping on the glass really is. At pet stores they'd always said it scared the fish, right? Five wasn't trying to do that.

It does startle AJ, who flinches and rouses all at once. He'd been sleeping with his belly against the bottom of his bowl, his nose tipped downwards, in a move that Five could only identify as sleep at all because of its unusual nature for a fish-- it's not like his eyes closed, after all. Shaking himself off with a blustery noise, AJ tips up to look at the boy and instinctively tries to sit up to greet him, to no avail. Ah, right. His body is still offline. He tries, regardless-- _really_ tries to pour his thoughts into the inert body beneath him, but he can't even muster the twitch of a single finger. He sighs wearily, his fins starting to flutter to keep him aloft. 

"Good morning," he says flatly, knowing that nothing about this is good for either of them. He can already feel the water in his tank is significantly warmer than usual, without the temperature-modulation of his tank online, which could pose a serious problem later in the day if they aren't able to get to safety in time to cool off. "I hate to ask, but did you check if my host is still alive?"

"I checked," Five assures, "It's still living, but I don't know how long you two can go without being connected," He admits, somewhat reluctantly. Rude and presumptuous as it may have been to assume AJ needed his body as much as it needed him, it also would make sense. That tank didn't power itself, so whatever robotics were in the body had to help him, too.

"A few days," AJ answers. "In fact, it'll probably live longer than I will, if we can't re-establish the connection. I can't very well light a cigarette underwater, without that filter I'm a goner. So the sooner we can get to your tools, the better."

Little arms lift and shove the cushions of his makeshift bed out of the aisle, clearing a path for AJ's body-- because it was those same arms that would have to now lift this adult, grown man down and out of a bus, and into a waiting wagon, "I have an idea for how to transport you, but it's going to be pretty uncomfortable. If we leave now we should be able to make it before it gets too dark," Five says primly, "I think the important thing has to be getting you home and inside. Fortunately I can turn on the generator and we can get water there, but--"

Leaning back, Five's hands settle on his hips as he fixes AJ with a stern, calculating look, like he was currently envisioning how best to tackle this particular obstacle, "You know, sometimes I wish I'd gotten the super strength in the family," he jokes dryly. It wasn't even true, but that was fine- AJ probably didn't know what he was talking about either way.

"If you had the super strength, you wouldn't be here," AJ says as Five helps his host down onto its back on one of the cushions, so he can grab the edge and slide him down the length of the bus more easily. "So I can't blame you for that. Try not to scuff the suit too much? I still have to look at least marginally presentable for the agents who will come inspect the source of the anomaly in my quarters."

He lets out a soft "oof" when Five misjudges just slightly and knocks his tank gently against the edge of the bus as they approach the door, sending a small ripple through his tank. For all a fish _can_ grimace, he does, as Five yanks him over the edge of the door and onto the dust with an undignified flop, and he can't tell whether the boy explicitly disobeyed his request to be delicate with him out of spite, or if he simply wasn't strong enough to avoid the damage that was probably done to the back of his suit. Most likely the latter, given the way Five stands up to wipe his forehead and sigh, as soon as AJ is sprawled out at his feet in the dirt. 

"Is _that_ your plan?" AJ asks warily as he eyeballs the red wagon beside them, raising his voice to be heard over the wind and distance between him and Five's ears. It doesn't look like it'll hold a grown man at all.

"Yep," Five says without elaboration, turning to the wagon and removing the slight amount of supplies. It'll be cramped, and AJ is definitely going to be hanging out, more than a little bit. But there's nothing that can be done. There are no other options for him. 

A part of AJ has to know that. As Five carefully sets the still-broken briefcase on the ground, followed by the four meager remaining cans, and his two canteens, it really doesn't look like a lot-- but Five had already forgone all the stuff he'd been planning on moving to his other safe house, the tarp and blankets and finery left in a car on the highway for some other hapless survivor to come across. It was easier to pretend like there were other people that had survived.

Getting AJ into the wagon isn't easy or graceful. It's hardly coordinated. Five isn't much for physical strength even after a year, even with his surprising ability to use innovation to his advantage. When it comes to brute force, it has never been Five's forte-- and probably never will be. He ends up shoving AJ onto the wagon in sections, first putting his feet in, then lifting his hips, until finally, like an accordion, he's able to squeeze AJ's head and torso onto the thing. With maneuvering, AJ's arms lay crossed and prone protectively holding the briefcase, their weight keeping it secure. His knees are up, feet wedged into the corners of the wagon, and his sides supported by the cans and canteens. 

Five's sweating when he finishes, and the Sun feels hot, but he looks pleased enough with himself when he finishes, hands propped on his hips as he looks at his work, shrugging a shoulder, "It's the best we got. You good to go?" Five asks, grabbing the handle and giving an experimental tug. It was heavy as fuck. This was going to suck.

"I suppose," AJ says, sounding entirely unconvinced that this will even work. His host looks ridiculous, all scrunched up into a tiny wagon, like a petulant child in mother's shopping cart. But it's the best Five can do, and honestly at this point, he'll take what he can get, regardless of the indignity of it. 

Five hauls the wagon behind him at a wretchedly slow pace at first, occasionally bumping the front wheel axel painfully off the backs of his ankles until he gets the hang of how much force he has to apply to get the wagon in motion, and how much momentum the wagon has now with 200 pounds of adult human man inside it (more or less human, anyway) and AJ just feels more and more useless by the second. 

_Again_ , he's struck by the fact that he's letting a young boy do all his dirty work, regardless of the fact that he'd technically not even had an option to rescue himself in either situation. It can be an incredibly helpless feeling, being stuck inside a tank, hopelessly unable to move or defend himself. He's not even an impressive fish, he's just a goddamn shubunkin. Hardy though they may be, they aren't known for their self-defense capabilities, even in open water. 

And here he is, stuck inside 5 gallons of inert water, attached to hundreds of pounds of _meat_ for all the good it is right now, watching Five huff and puff and struggle to pull a wagon that he's only stuck carrying because AJ came to meddle in his past in the first place. Sure, this would ultimately pan out for the better for not just the two of them but every single person in the Commission _and_ Five's family-- but it can be hard to look to the future when one is stuck inside a tank in the boiling hot sun of the apocalypse, watching a skinny 14 year old suffer for hours through the grueling process of pulling AJ to safety.

And it _is_ grueling, there's no other word for it. Five pushes through like a workhorse who knew no other life, pulling stubbornly across gritty roads and uneven pavement. They're both fortunate in that, for the most part, Five is able to wiggle his wagon through the cars stuck on the road at the moment of impact. Five had always wondered if they were people escaping, or just people in traffic when the world ended. For the most part, it seemed like the world ended spontaneously, with very few homes packed up and very few signs of the chaos that came with a predicted apocalyptic event.

They don't talk, both to conserve energy and also to avoid small talk. It's one of Five's least favorite expectations of interacting with people, and it was difficult for AJ to even make his voice carry beyond the tank. There was no way they'd be able to hold continuous, easy conversation over the loud rumble of the tires on the road, or the wind in Five's ears. 

With the Sun blaring down on them, Five begins to check in with AJ more often, in part because he has to pause more often to take drinks of his water, refusing to carry the canteen on his person out of fear that he'll drink too much of it too fast without thinking about the rest of the walk ahead of them. About halfway there, they stop for lunch-- and even that's a quiet affair. Five tucks into canned raisin bread that has the consistency of a mildewed sponge and AJ watches, leaving Five to finish fast and pack up early, well aware that he's the only chance AJ has of surviving. He isn't naive to the way AJ's voice has seemed to fade the past few times he's checked in, the heat from the sun brutally beating onto the boy, the wagon, and the poor fish trapped inside.

AJ hasn't had a lot of experiences with heat, in his lifetime. He started in the ocean, like everyone else of his kind, which was always naturally at a cool temperature-- and then when he finally moved up onto land with a host of his own, his tank was always perfectly temperature controlled. There was never a point in his life where he actually had to deal with heat for any extended period of time. 

And now, he's coming to terms with the fact that he really, _supremely_ isn't suited for it. It isn't even like Five, who looks like he's about to sweat his own skin off, and keeps having to pause to take water breaks, but with his hood up over his head to keep the sun off his face as it steadily crawls across the sky and starts beating down on his back, he looks more or less like he'll pull through just fine. Humans are strangely sturdy, like that. 

AJ, on the other hand, has found that as the sun continues to heat up the water in his tank, it's started to get harder and harder to _breathe_. He's even let himself lay against the glass on the underside of his tank on his side, just to try and soak up any of the coolness that he can, but it isn't much more than a physical comfort. There's no way he can deny it to himself-- the warmer the water gets, the harder it's getting to breathe. 

Five at least seems to notice that something is seriously wrong when he looks behind him to check on AJ like he has so many other times, and finds him not hovering in the center of his tank, but rather laying on his side on the bottom. AJ is so focused on just breathing that he doesn't even notice Five's panic until the boy is acting as a barrier between him and the sun, hunching over his tank and casting a lifesaving shadow over the exhausted fish. 

"I'm afraid it's getting hard to breathe," AJ admits, his voice a little wheezy and sluggish, almost too soft to make it through the glass. "I think it's the heat."

"Shit," Five curses under his breath, squinting down at the little fish, looking so sickly and truly unwell at the bottom of his bowl. His voice is more faint than its been since they met, Five's ears genuinely straining to hear him through the water and glass. Looking down at the body, it was hard to even think of a solution with the bowl attached the way it is. 

There were clasps connecting tank to base, Five had noticed them before. That implied that he could be _removed_ from the body, if need be-- but would Five be able to do it? Would he be able to be reattached once they got somewhere safe? "What if I take you off of your body?" Five asks, the idea still forming as he talks, "I can probably rig something--" he pats at himself, then tugs at his layers.

Under his coat is the hoodie that had been protecting his head from the sun as they walked. It was far too large on him, but he knows it could get the job done so he quickly takes it off, then puts back on, backwards, the hood hanging low under his chin. "If I disconnect you, I can put you in here so you won't be hit by the sun, and you'd get oxygen flow from having open air, right?" Five is really trying, that much is clear.

It takes AJ a few moments for the thoughts to connect to his brain, but when he has a second to process the information, eyeballing the low sling of Five's big hood, he can see what the boy is going for. "Yes, I-- I think that would work," he says. "Just-- try not to spill too much?"

It's quite a process, getting AJ unhooked from his body. First Five has to put on the brakes on his wagon to make sure the wheels don't send it skittering all over, and then he jams a piece of broken concrete in front of one of the wheels just to make extra sure it doesn't go rolling away. Then he has to tug at AJ's body until his shoulders and tank are hanging upside down off the back of the wagon, so that when Five carefully unlatches the hooks holding the base of his tank to the sturdy neckpiece, not very much of the water has a chance to spill out. 

Some still does, and lands on his shoes, but they're weather proofed so the water just sluices off to the dusty concrete as Five staggers back with the weight of the tank. It's considerably more than he was expecting, just a 5-gallon tank as it is, but it's got to be approaching 65 pounds. Fitting it into the hood at his neck has it hanging down low and the hem cutting painfully into the back of his neck, but a simple piece of hard leather there at least spreads the contact point of cloth and skin somewhat, bracing the weight over a greater surface area. It's still almost unbearable, and when the tank jostles the first time it splashes water all down his front-- but that turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because as soon as the water soaks into his clothes, it immediately starts to cool him down, as he struggles to then fit AJ's body back in the wagon and continue to drag him from behind with _another_ 60-odd pounds weighing him down from the front. 

AJ does _not_ envy the poor boy. 

If their conversation was stilted before, it was nonexistent now. Above him, Five huffed and clenched his jaw as he began to work into another steady rhythm. Mechanical in its motion, Five kept his chin up and seemed to step first with the intention of lifting the tank at his chest, then pulling to bring the wagon along. The road was blissfully more even, now, at least, and should remain that way for the rest of the trip.

They cross a barren stretch of road that somehow had every single car in it pushed to one side or the other, leaving the entire center free to walk through without incident. There's the occasional patch of tightly-packed buildings that managed to withstand the events, but for the most part Five takes AJ through a tour of what looks like an entire planet of garbage. Nigh-indistinguishable from the bustling utopia Earth was throughout the rest of time, the entire cityscape had been demolished, pockets of things that once-were poking out beneath tons of rubble. 

"Doing okay?" Five checks in with AJ wearily as they pause for Five to drink hungrily from his canteen. He'd had to be a little less careful with it as the hours waged on and his body began to move slower, limbs beginning to ache and grow painful. He doesn't complain, though, looking wearily down into the tank, hoping the fish was feeling well enough to reply.

While AJ had preserved as much of his energy as he could as his tank slowly cooled down thanks to the intervention of the boy looming over him, he lifts himself off the bottom when he's addressed, and finds the water passing through his gills and fins much cooler than before. 

"Yes, much," he answers, tipping his body back so he can look up at the boy over him. "I do believe you've saved my life. I'd call us even, but let's wait until we get back to the Commission to don those laurels, hm?"

He's perked up considerably now that he isn't actually literally a fish drowning, the previous heat choking all of the oxygen out of the water. He can see that the boy is struggling still with the weight now dragging him down at his front and his back, and so AJ does whatever he can to alleviate some of the pressure-- he talks. 

Not just about nonsense, he talks about the Commission. He tells Five about their mission plan-- to make sure that time passes in exactly the way it should, to correct any messy meddling and repair the timeline whenever someone strays from their set path-- something that AJ himself is acting against, now. But, he argues, that while this is at least a marginally selfish goal in that it saves him from the execution he would have faced eventually within a wild river in Canada, it also ultimately saves quite literally the entire world-- and beyond, considering taking the Handler out of her position of power could save countless more lives from her selfish and cavalier conduct. 

He talks about the structure of the Commission, how it's separated into the Switchboard operators, the Overseers, Acquisitions and the Field Agents, and even the more clerical and janitorial services offered on campus by people who partake in the pleasantries of everyday Commission life without having to worry about seeing a speck of danger, themselves. He regales Five with stories of some of the more noteworthy cases in the Commission hall of fame, entertaining him with some of the cleverest examples of creative problem solving that the company has seen to date. 

However, he elects to stay firmly off the topic of Five's exploits within the halls of that same organization, deciding not to broach that particular subject unless the boy specifically asks after it. He'd rather not grind it in for him that he suffered in the apocalypse for 40 years the first time before the Commission decided to pick him up and make use of him. AJ's worst mistake, to date.

Five doesn't answer while AJ talks, but that doesn't seem entirely good or bad. He doesn't look upset and he certainly doesn't look like he's ignoring him, but Five just genuinely can't walk and talk at the same time. But he does nod, he does grunt his approval and his understanding, encouraging AJ's stories and only wondering vaguely what he'd contributed to such an army of problem solvers. 

Though, if AJ _were_ to ask Five, some of those 'cunning endeavors' could have been solved much easier, much neater. He could find a few loopholes in some of the plans AJ discussed, spots where things still could have gone wrong after so much careful attention paid to the problem at hand. It also wasn't lost on Five that AJ didn't mention anything he'd done, which in Five's mind could only lead to one conclusion: he was a pretty big fucking deal. Call it arrogance, call it self confidence, call it whatever you want, but the simple fact remained that it wouldn't make sense for Five to be worth altering an entire fucking timeline for unless he was a Big Fucking Deal.

So he smiles into the sky as the sun begins to lazily tug back down over the horizon behind him. The weather had held up, the day turning impossibly hot and Five's breaks coming more and more frequently. At AJ's insistence he eats through all the cans he'd brought, and he's working on the last dregs of his final canteen when he finally seems to stop at the edge of one of the boroughs, separated only by a long bridge between. Even through the water and cloth of Five's hoodie, AJ can feel the sag of relief that sinks into Five's entire body at the sight of it.

"We're here," Five finally says, almost sounding like he might cry. Better still, the sun was beginning to slip behind a few of the taller buildings remaining, casting long lines of shadow that could Five could walk in, blissfully without squinting, "Only about an hour, now." He says, back straightening and strides going long and strong again, renewed by a second wind and the promise of a swiftly approaching and well-earned break.

For the last hour, AJ decides to give Five a final boost of energy by talking about the amenities that the Commission provides that Five will be able to take advantage of once he's moved in, himself. He'll have a private room with a feather bed, his own personal bathroom, four meals a day and state of the art training equipment-- and just talking about how good he'll have it on the other side of the finish line seems to give Five the strength he needs to packhorse his way across the bridge and through the winding streets of the city towards their destination. 

AJ comes up to the surface of the water occasionally, poking his head out to look around them. As it gets darker with the shadows stretching longer, it gets harder for him to see with Five's hood blocking out all light from his tank. He holds his breath and surfaces, looking around curiously at what looks like the burnt-out shell of a suburb. 

Most of the houses went up in ash and smoke ages ago, but some of the more tightly-packed ones were shielded from the worst of the blast by their companion homes huddled around them, and without even being told, AJ can see which one they're headed towards. It's a small home, nestled in between a parking garage on the edge of the suburb and a much larger townhome beside it. It looks very nearly untouched, with some singing on the front facade but otherwise mostly intact, with a front door and everything. The front stairs won't even pose that much of a challenge, as it looks like Five had come by here before with his wagon, and covered half the stairs in a heavy board. 

Five carries AJ's tank in first, so he won't have to worry about spilling him while he's tugging the rest of his body up the steep stairs, and AJ is just left to listen in the living room, propped carefully between the cushions on a moldy old sofa as Five grunts and wheezes through the process of dragging the wheels up a board that clearly doesn't want to support them with an adult man in the wagon, but he hears the triumphant bellow of the boy as he finally crests the top step and sags onto the porch. 

"Are you alright?" AJ calls from inside, but his voice is so tiny he doubts it would even carry to the poor boy. 

It's abundantly clear that it doesn't-- Five doesn't even answer him. AJ can hear the exhausted panting of Five catching his breath for a second, but then the hard sound of wheels on wood greets him and Five appears in the doorway to the living room, toting the body proudly behind him like a dog with a branch it had fetched from the woods. 

"Once I bring the house online, I have probably enough gas saved up to run some things for a couple of days. We should focus on getting your body back online first, right?" Five is all business with barely a second for celebration, but his energy is much better. He's grinning wide, leaving AJ's body in the wagon as he bustles around the living room checking various instruments and measurements-- he seemed to have a whole weather station set up, monitoring for rain or wind changes or electrical spikes-- before turning back to AJ, tilting his head, "Is there anything that would work best for that, or do I just figure it out?"

"If you lay my body on the floor on its front, I can walk you through it..." AJ says, sounding conflicted. On the one hand, the quicker he's reconnected to his body, the quicker he can take some of the pressure off the poor boy by attending to whatever he can do with his own two hands, sparing Five from the heavy work load he's been saddled with ever since AJ's connection to his body was fried. 

But on the other hand, Five _desperately_ looks like he needs a good, long sleep-- however that would put AJ's body more in jeopardy, the longer they wait. Five already had to check multiple times throughout the day just to make sure it was still alive, and AJ didn't love the odds if they waited much longer to re-establish their connection. It's an organic body, after all, and if Five suffered in the heat then there's absolutely no doubt his body suffered as well-- and without the tank attachment for the last half of the day, it didn't even have access to water. 

"But we don't have to do it this second," AJ says, after a moment of thought. "You ought to get yourself situated. Humans require water to survive, and you haven't eaten anything in a few hours. We can get to work on my body after you've had time to rest."

Five looks confused, eyebrows furrowing as he's clearly thrown by the suggestion. It wasn't like AJ was _wrong_ , Five was intensely, _bone-deep_ exhausted, but he also wasn't about to risk his ticket out of the apocalypse dying on him just because he wanted to eat a goddamn Snickers--

An awful thought, because now Five _really_ wanted a Snickers, and the tales AJ had told Five about the Commission campus were really starting to seem like a dream. He licks his lips, suddenly very aware of his tongue and how very dry it was, how little he'd been sipping at his water towards the end until the canteen had finally run dry, leaving him very thirsty for the final 30 minutes. He hesitates, clearly balancing between arguing and doing as he's told.

"Water and a snack," Five finally agrees, "But while I'm eating you're explaining what we need to do to get you back in control of this thing, deal?" He says, and it looks like he was about to stick his hand out before realizing that AJ wouldn't've been able to reciprocate the gesture.

"Deal," AJ says, relieved. He's similarly thinking about how little he wants to risk his ticket dying-- the stakes are incredibly high for them both. 

Five lays his body out on its front on the ground as told, but then scurries off to fetch food and water, laying out a picnic of nonperishables to indulge in with a real metal spoon, and setting up his tool box on the other side of him to work once he's ready. 

"The wiring in the neckpiece is quite delicate," AJ explains as Five digs into a can of tuna. "The way I connect with my body is by brainwaves. My kind are mildly telepathic, not to the point we can read minds, but I can... interface, in a sense, with others of my kind, through a process we call equillence. Sort of like a Vulcan mind meld, if you had to compare it to something. Through this same process, we were able to interface with our organic hosts using a device that acts as the receiver for our thoughts, rather than another caraquid. The panel in the back should allow you to access both the device, and the motherboard it's hooked up to-- the latter of which is likely what short circuited. It's built with a failsafe to keep any electricity from making it into the water and-- well. Turning me into fish and chips."

"Do you need to be reattached to the body first?" Five asks around a mouth full of food, "Or can it be remotely? I've seen these things around here, they're little, they're like--" he glances around like he's looking for an example, tapping his ear, "Earpieces. Bluetooth. I remember 'cause it's kind of a weird one. From what I can tell they send electrical signals through the air-- can you do that, or will we need to figure out how to get you on there without losing more water?" Maybe there was a way they could refill it once AJ was settled-- surely that had to be the case, otherwise... 

Well, otherwise they'd be heading into enemy territory with a very obvious tell-- AJ hadn't lost an unnoticeable amount of water yet, but considering the tank is usually completely full, it'd be obvious to anyone even the few inches missing from the top.

"I'll need to be connected in order to control my body. I'm quite little, in case you hadn't noticed-- my brain waves don't travel very far. But if you're worried about fiddling with the wiring, I don't need to be connected in order for you to do that. There are lights within the base that will indicate whether everything is in working order, I don't need to be attached for that. As for reattaching me, we'll just have to be careful. It usually requires a special table-- I don't come off my body very often. Unfortunately there isn't really a solution that isn't... inelegant."

Nodding while he cleans his can of tuna out with his finger and licks it clean-- repulsive, considering that very same hand had been clenched around a filthy wagon tongue for 8 hours, had done untold amounts of labor, and hadn't been properly washed in at least a month-- Five finally tosses the can into a waste bin across the room, not bothering to even check if it lands because he already knows it does. He downs his entire glass of water in one go, a low-voiced moan leaving his throat and chest once he does as the well-cooled water does wonders for his exhausted body.

"Okay," Five says, putting his hands on his knees and pushing out so he can sit upright, then stand, raising up to pull AJ out of the wagon and onto the floor, arranging him within eyesight of AJ, as denoted by the little wiggle of his fin that Five had to assume was a thumbs up, "First thing's first, let me open you up and see what you're working with." 

Gingerly Five opens his toolbox, fingers running over each metallic bit reverently before he withdraws a slim screwdriver. Very carefully he removes the cover of the back panel on AJ's neckpiece, depositing both the panel and screws in a small box to keep them close before, with bated breath, he opens Carmichael's... body? armor? carapace? to squint at the wiring inside, "Okay, looks like there's a circuit breaker right in front of me. Am I in the right place?"

"Yes, that's it," AJ confirms, watching as best as he can from where he's propped on the couch in the waning light. What he wouldn't give for his damn tank lighting. "Try flipping the switch first, it might be as simple as a reboot."

He watches as Five flips the tiny switch with a pair of plier-tweezers, rather than trying to cram his fingers into such a delicate area, and after a moment of silence, AJ asks, "Is there a green light on the breaker?" Five shakes his head no, and AJ sighs. "Of course it wouldn't be that easy. Very well, look just below it, at the wires feeding into it. There should be 12 wires. 9 black, 2 red and one white-- can you see them?" He waits for Five to nod. "Carefully, very carefully strip back the plastic casing on the white wire and describe to me what you see."

Five does as instructed, carefully cutting into and peeling back the coating. Within, the wires are jet black, clearly fried by the electricity that shot up through it, but the port the wire feeds into isn't even singed-- speaking to the advanced circuitry within AJ's tank, and how quickly on a dime it can shut itself off to preserve its caraquid passenger.

"Well, these are shot," Five says immediately without hesitation, not bothering even to describe them to AJ, "Completely, actually, all the way up," He continues, peeling back more and more plastic casing, until the entire wire is exposed. He squints down into the port, looking curiously at it, "Looks like the actual system is good, though. I'll just need to replace it, which..."

Turning, Five begins to dig through his toolbox. It's big, decently impressive, and it makes sense, too-- in the apocalypse, surely one had to become a sort of professional at fixing things, or at least bullshitting things to make them work either way. He pulls out a long spool of copper wire.

He measures the wire against the length in the back of AJ's helmet, and he frowns, hesitating as he is drawn short, "The wire's going to be uninsulated, though. Once we get to someplace where we can get our hands on some, it'll probably be a good idea to swap it out," Squinting at the board of wires, Five tries to look for anything that could possibly be dangerous about having a live wire amongst a switchboard of insulated ones. "I could probably wrap some electrical tape around it, just in case."

"It really should be insulated," AJ confirms, and Five immediately sets to work braiding together a thick cord of a few wires together, so it'll carry a more substantial current. It still won't work as well as the real thing, but they can worry about that after they get back to the Commission. 

It's only a couple minutes of work for Five to wrap the cord and strip the ruined wire out of the base of the neckpiece. It's the only one that's fried, luckily, as the main grounding wire that connects the collar to the wiring that undoubtedly stretched further into the host itself, which carried the majority of the current from brain to body. If the killswitch wasn't so finely tuned, the rest of the wires might have suffered in the process, as well. 

Fitting his makeshift cord into the port on either end, Five quickly tightens the bolts back into place and flips the switch one more time-- and this time, every light on the inside of the helmet blinks to life. Five's triumphant gasp is matched by AJ's as the boy looks up at him, eyes wide. 

"Well _done_ , my boy!" AJ gives a little twirl in his tank. They're not quite out of the woods yet, there's still the complicated matter of getting AJ back onto his body, but at least the system is back online. 

There's the blossom of warmth in Five's chest there usually is when he does a job well and correctly, the self-serving part of himself that gives himself credit where there is usually none. So it's weird when another voice joins his own mental litany, AJ practically flipping in his bowl. Five's head snaps to him, eyebrows furrowing as a weird flutter in his chest catches on his throat. 

_Well done?_ The compliment sticks to Five in a way he can't explain, hitting right behind his sternum. "Uh-- thanks," He says finally, voice a little odd and strangled, but he's happy to move on from the moment without looking too closely at whatever it was he was feeling. _Validation?_

Whatever it was, Five packs up his tools and shoves them to the side as he stands, looking over the body. "Okay," He says, moving his brain onto the next project so he can leave behind the knot in his chest. Hands on his hips, he looks from AJ to the body, then back again, "It'll probably be easier if I sit the body up. I can lean it against the couch, then stand and try to... reattach you from above." He would have to be fast, very fast, to avoid as much water spillage as possible. Problem was, there wasn't much he could do for 'fast' when it came to 5 gallons of water being flipped upside-down. "You can swim up, right? To avoid falling out?" It was a genuine question, asked earnestly. Five really didn't know.

"Yes, I'm quite practiced at this process," AJ says, hoping to put the boy at ease. Still, he can't shake the helpless feeling he always gets whenever he has to rely on another person to reattach him to his host.

Five situates AJ's body at the best angle, mathematically speaking, positioning his neckpiece against the edge of the sofa. It'll be a matter of tipping over AJ's tank quickly enough that the base connects with the neckpiece with minimal water escaping-- then it'll just be a matter of Five slamming down the latches in time before anything shifts out of place. 

"Is this usually how you do it?" Five grumbles as he measures the distance again and again with his eyes, making minor adjustments to the angle. 

"Not quite like this," AJ admits. "Usually if I need to be detached for tank cleaning every few months, my body will be laid out on a special table I have just for the purpose, on its front, with the neckpiece hanging over the edge-- sort of like a chiropractics bed. Then it's just a matter of popping me back on after."

"It would help if your tank could close," Five says, making another small adjustment to the direction of AJ's tank. 

"You aren't the first to suggest it," AJ sighs. "Unfortunately, I've tried to have an airlock system installed multiple times, and while I can connect with my body to send the impulse to close it, I can't open it again after. As I've said, my brainwaves aren't very strong, and I need to have a direct line to the amplifier in order to communicate with the circuitry within my host. Any attempts to include a design that has a closing hatch has disabled that no matter how thin we attempt to make the barrier-- even glass. If my host could survive with the latch closed that would be fine, but it needs the water in my tank to survive. Back on my home planet, whenever we needed to be detached for any reason, we'd just take our entire host underwater with us-- it isn't as though they need to breathe. But we don't even have a swimming pool at the Commission, so I make due."

Five grunts his affirmation that he hears Carmichael, but seems to be aligning for the final push. One leg goes to the couch, bracing himself against the horizontal support structure under the cushions. Either hand finds either side of the tank, his thumbs braced against the edges. He takes a deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth, muscles tensing a few times without AJ moving, like Five was preparing for the final heave.

"Okay, on three I'm going to go, got it? One... two... three!" With a heave, Five tips the tank over onto AJ's neck, just as AJ swims upward into the dome of his tank. Five can feel the glass panes slide into the vacuum-sealed locks, with only minor dripping, and so his fingers quickly work at the clasps, slipping as water begins to stream from the cracks the longer Five goes without sealing him-- until finally there's the wet popping noise and the water stops leaking, the tank stops wobbling... and the lights are on AJ once more, illuminating his body atop his neck looking worse for wear only by a couple of inches of water at the top. 

With his hands out in front of him, Five takes one tentative step away from Carmichael, then another, moving cautiously like he was expecting the tank to fall off any second and to have to dive to catch it. "How does it feel?" Five asks, "Sturdy? Does everything look okay?"

"You did wonderful," AJ says, praising Five again like it's just that easy to do it, but when he tries to connect with his body, and engage it into motion, he feels nary a twitch in even his pinkie finger, and he lets out a weary sigh. "I fear it wasn't as simple as just replacing the wire. I still can't seem to move. That means there's most likely a more serious issue in the connection. The amplifier isn't picking up my brainwaves."

He looks sullenly up at the boy, immediately feeling his pain with him when he watches Five's shoulders sag. So close to triumph, and yet one more obstacle rises up in the way. And this one is far more complicated than just replacing a wire. 

"What's that mean?" Five asks immediately, hopping down from the couch and looking at AJ, now perched atop his body, still without control. Still, must've been nice to at least be back at home atop his host. Five had to imagine being a fish in anything with an open lid is a scary experience. "I checked all the other wires, they were good. I even pressed some of the stuff, you saw me, it was good, nothing should be broken.." Five says quickly, going around AJ to kneel in front of him, beginning to inspect the junction between tank and body.

"If my thoughts can't connect, that just means that the amplifier that carries my brainwaves to the device that controls the nervous system in my host has been shot. It must be something to do with the circuitboard itself, if the wires aren't damaged. Blast it, that's going to be a much more complicated fix. If we can't find a way to boost my brainwaves enough to get my body in motion-- well, I don't know what we're going to do."

"It's just a matter of making your brainwaves reach the device at the base?" Five asks, fingers tracing along the clasps to double-check their strength, ensuring he didn't miss anything. He's thinking very hard, that much is obvious from the way his brow furrows and his mouth is set into a firm line. By now, it's an expression AJ is used to seeing.

"Given the source of the damage dealt, I'd say that's most likely the case," AJ sighs softly. "Unfortunately that isn't going to be as simple of a fix. If the power source to the amplifier is damaged, it isn't as easy as swapping out a battery. I have a self-sustaining perpetual-motion device acting as a power source, and my guess is that was damaged, so the amplifier is only getting power from the mainframe-- and that simply isn't enough."

He's still thinking. If the scowl stayed fixed on Five's face for much longer, it'd probably get stuck that way. "Once you regain power, do you think the perpetual-motion device would get back online? Or do we need to attach you to a battery or something?" It would be obnoxious, and who even knew how much power it would take to actually maintain the connection between AJ and his host, but Five could do it in a pinch if need be, he was sure of it.

"The device would need a boost to get going, at which point it should hold, fingers crossed-- unless it's severely damaged, at which point it would need a steady external power source until we can get back to the Commission and repair it properly," AJ says, sounding just as exhausted as Five feels. The longer this drags on and the more complexities arise, the more AJ understands just how much the boy had suffered in all those long decades in the apocalypse, barely scraping by by the skin of his teeth.

All at once, Five pushes himself to his feet. "Okay," He says, voice as grim as his face is, "Be right back." Five holds his hand out to AJ to ask him to wait as if the fish could even go anywhere, even attached as he now was, and then he's gone, back into the depths of the house which AJ had seen so little of. 

When Five comes back a second later, it's wheeling a large box on a cart, with two sets of what appeared to be jumper cables coming out of either side of it, along with a dial, some diodes, and some wattage output meters. Under the box on the cart is what looks like a car battery, primed and attached to the electrical current amplifier. Five pulls the cart just shy of AJ, then stops in front of him, looking behind himself to the machine he'd brought with him. 

"Okay, this might be a stretch, but I think I have something," Five explains like his companion is a child, "I think I can amplify your brainwaves externally just enough to get your suit going by using this to send a connection straight into your host and your connection. If I go slow enough, it shouldn't trip the failsafe to turn you off."

"Is that _safe?"_ AJ yelps, looking at the jawlike clamps on the ends of the cables running out of the car battery with trepidation. "Those are made to run an entire motor vehicle-- in case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit smaller than a Buick!"

"That's what this is for," Five explains, putting a hand on the center box that the cables run from, patting it like a reliable, old friend. Ironic, considering this was almost entirely guesswork and he'd only ever read about using this from books he'd managed to find on what the fuck it was in the first place. Initially he'd just grabbed it because it looked useful. 

Setting rubber gloves in both of the teeth of both ground wires, Five talks as he works, "With this I can start the electrical current as low as 50 watts, then slowly dial it up until it manages to kickstart the system without tripping it. Using the dials, see?" Five points at them on the front, "I can adjust how much goes into from the battery and how much comes out the other side." In theory, anyway-- but Five doesn't say that part.

"Dear merciful heavens, if this boy is about to fricassee me, just send me another lightning strike, take me now," AJ pleads towards the sky, even putting his fins together in mock prayer as the battery gives a threatening sort of hum-buzz while it comes to life. He swims to the back of his tank as Five approaches with the cables, as if those few inches would really spare him the wrath of the current that's about to come through them. 

Fluttering back to the front of the tank, AJ watches as Five clamps the live wire to one of the metal latches on AJ's tank, and the grounding clamp goes carefully around his wrist, placed with enough care that the teeth don't dig too badly into any tendons-- not that AJ would even be able to feel it, if they were, with his connection shot the way it is. 

"I do hope you know what you're doing," he says desperately, watching Five return to the control box and mess with the dials to pulse a low current, and then he flips the switch to send it skittering into his body. It's a low enough current that AJ can see his host's fingers twitch just slightly, only once, but otherwise it seems unbothered by the voltage. "I can't feel anything yet," AJ says, grateful at least that with his speakers working now he doesn't have to shout at the top of his gills anymore. 

"Speakers worked without a problem, though, that's good," Five points out, "I heard you clear there. Means there isn't a circuit board issue." It sounds like he's saying it to soothe AJ, but it's more for himself, too, like he was checking off things to do on a list. Knowing Five, he was. 

Carefully, he turns the dial up another 50 volts, knowing damn well it would probably take more than that to power the entire bodysuit-fish combo. The machine whirs and the humming grows louder with each increase in wattage. When they hit 200, Five puts a few fingers on AJ's host's wrist, checking its pulse. "You're doing fine," Five says when AJ's host is, indeed, alive, "Around 500 volts is what I imagine it would take to reboot the entire system, but 300 should be enough to reinstate your existing energy production... If not, it's entirely fried and we find a way to attach this car battery to your suit." 

Another shrug from Five punctuates the bitter worst-case scenario and he leans back, turning the wattage up another 50 and waiting expectantly to see if AJ can feel anything at all.

"Oh, and wouldn't that be fashionable?" AJ complains. He knows it isn't Five's fault-- he's the one who hauled his cookies to the apocalypse and got himself struck by lightning and let the Handler get out of control in the first place. He knows it took a long series of events, almost all of which he personally took part in to get him here-- but that doesn't mean he's happy about it, and it doesn't mean he isn't going to complain at least a little bit. 

The voltage increases again, and the muscles in AJ's body are starting to twitch, as the fish just continues complaining. "We can just attach it to my belt. Maybe we could pass it off as a big buckle. Or a purse! You humans love your purses. If the agents who find us ask, I'll just tell them I was feeling like accessorizing."

All at once, he feels a twitch in his chest-- and then suddenly realizes he has a chest as the volt shoots down through his stomach and all the way down to his toes. He shouts and sits up all at once, and Five slams the machine back off in a hurry, cranking it back down to zero and practically ripping the cords off of AJ to keep from feeding absolutely a second's worth of energy more into him than he needs. AJ's hands are shaking as the residual electricity works through his system, but he's looking up at the boy with wide, gold eyes. 

"By jove, I can't believe that actually _worked_ ," he says with a twitter in his voice. "You really are some kind of wunderkind, aren't you?"

Five is looking at AJ with just as much astonishment in his own eyes, before it's replaced with a smug, giddy sort of pride, smiling wide and looking at the man like he was a prize in himself. At least for Five's ego, he was doing wonders. "Don't know if I'd say that," Five says with the underlying grin of someone raised to be politely humble, even in the face of their obvious success. It was a media answer, like AJ worked for the New York Times. "How do you feel?" After flipping off the device and making sure everything is disconnected from each other, Five puts his fingers to AJ's wrist to check his pulse. It's a little fast, but it's diminishing by the second as the residual static works its way through his system and out the other end, body converting it into energy and siphoning off what it can't. It was really a clever system. "Any weird tension? Any control issues? You should try clenching your hands and feet to make sure everything's working as it should." 

"A little jumpy in the chest, but the fact that I can _feel_ that at all is a miracle," AJ answers with a relieved sigh as he pats himself down, checking for injury. Lord above, but his body is _sore_ from the hours it spent bunched in that bloody wagon.

With his hands on his hips, Five leans back with an exhausted smile, suddenly feeling like he could breathe again for the first time in days. He leans against the electric amplifier, harmless now that it was turned off, and lets his shoulders sag, "Do we have to worry about the water thing? You have to have a port or something, right? To fill it back up?" It's clear Five is almost on autopilot, thinking of every little obscure thing they had to do to get AJ right again and wanting to do it all right now.

"My body will refill the tank," AJ says as he does as Five suggested, first just squeezing his hands and flexing his toes, stretching his arms and legs in front of him to make sure he's getting feeling back into them at all. It's been so many hours since his body was left inert that he can feel some definite stiffness and fatigue in his muscles, and the water level in his tank is already going down by a few centimeters as his body hungrily sucks at the water to replenish itself-- a feeling he can relate to, with the ache in his physical body settling deep into his scales hours ago. 

Pushing up to his feet, AJ wobbles a bit on the landing before regaining his center of gravity. "I can feel a bit of a delay in the system," he says, a slight tic in his shoulder sending one of his arms shaking a bit. "I'll need some more serious repairs when we get back... but this should hold for now."

"Perfect," Five says, pushing the cart into the corner of the room. There's no real point in cleaning up, no real point in maintaining the steadfast organization that had been drilled into him from an early age. He wouldn't be coming back here, so there was no reason for him to keep it looking nice. Clearing his throat, Five pushes himself to standing upright, tugging at his shirt and combing a grubby hand through equally filthy hair, "Okay, well. Brief tour, right? Should be good to get you moving again anyway, some of those kinks might work themselves out the longer you're active and the more your body begins to operate on its own energy and not the shock I gave you." He doesn't bother asking how the host will refill the tank. He has an idea, but he has doesn't care to voice it.

"So this is the living room, not much. Just that way is the kitchen. I'm about to turn on the generator for the house, so if you want to feel the cold again give it about an hour and you can stick your hands in the fridge. Downstairs is my workshop, it's where I put all the stuff like that," Five gestures, and AJ realizes now that Five had just finished a massively harrowing trek, only to then get home and immediately get to work hauling what looked like an at-least 75 pound cart up some stairs to save his life, and was now giving him a tour to be polite.

Five is already moving on, though, heading out into the foyer of the house and opening another few doors, "Study room," He says to a side room lined with bookshelves and books, then gestures to what is obviously a bathroom, "Just a toilet and sink in this one," Five explains, "And upstairs are three bedrooms, a closet, another bathroom with a shower, and there's a third bathroom attached to the master room, but-- that's mine."

"Where do you sleep?" AJ asks, already fussing with his suit. It's a wreck, it'll take him some time to clean up and make himself presentable enough to not immediately rouse suspicion when they arrive back at the base, to the curious probing of those who will come running to see the source of the disturbance. 

"Uh, wherever I end up, mostly," Five admits, casting a furtive look around the house. Without a chance to clean up and definitely not expecting company there was evidence of Five's existence all over the place, and with the light and new vantage point of AJ's suit, he was able to see it himself.

There are bundles of clothing everywhere, and what looks to be a hoarders-level amount of _things_. They're all stacked into boxes, pushed against walls and barricading doors, but it's hard to miss the amount of things Five had accrued, many of them seemingly worthless and destroyed pieces of other things he had clearly hoped to MacGyver into something else. There were bundles of blankets in the corner of the living room, in the couch, in the hallway-- little nests where Five had clearly collapsed and gotten up and started the day all over again. Apparently, running himself ragged was just a thing he did. When Five gets the generator going with a massive pull on the cord, the a lamp in the living room illuminates, and exposes him further.

Writing litters the walls all the way up to the ceiling. AJ had left Five for a year in this hellscape. While it was certainly better than 40, that was still one entire year for a boy of 13 to spend alone, plenty of time for his goal of 'Home' to turn into an obsession. Evidence of it litters the house, every inch of wall taken by the frantic scribblings of math, occasionally entire sections scribbled out, some sections torn off the wall entirely-- although it was hard to say if that was Five, or damage from the fallout. Books on quantum theory, on string theory, on multidimensional and space-time travel are strewn across the floor like they were nothing. 

And, appearing in the doorway again is the boy who caused it all, standing amongst his work like he doesn't even realize how fucking insane it looks. "If you want to lay down, there are rooms upstairs I could show you. I was going to start working on the briefcase," Five says, pointing at it still situated in the wagon while rubbing at his eye with his other hand, blinking the aching burn out of them.

"No, you're not," AJ says, all authority in his voice as he marches up to the boy and puts his hands firmly on his shoulders-- even if his body is still delayed from his thoughts by a second or two. It's easy enough to compensate for, it just feels like he's walking underwater. His host was always more difficult to pilot while submerged, and the feeling is similar. "You're going to go to _sleep_. You just spent the entire day carrying hundreds of pounds for hours on end on four cans of food. You're going to eat a _proper_ dinner, and then lay down until I come to get you after a reasonable amount of time-- and you _aren't_ going to argue with me. The briefcase will be here in the morning."

Already, Five's mouth opens in protest, and AJ gives a sharp, "Ah-ah! I said no arguments. Dinner and then sleep. One word of argument and I'll wait 12 hours to wake you instead of 8. Now march."

"To where? The kitchen, or my room?" Five chides, but turns and marches toward the kitchen anyway, frowning and tugging his goggles up and over his head. Pulling the scarf from his neck, he tosses both objects on the small table pushed against the far wall of the kitchen, plucking off his jacket, then the tattered remnants of his shirt. It felt like eons ago that they'd been shoving insulation into the windows of the bus in the event of a dust storm. 

It was weird to think it was only a day ago. Five feels like he's aged a year in the past day alone. Suddenly he felt very glad for AJ's commanding presence, the firm hand telling him where the boundaries were so he didn't have to worry about establishing them. He lets AJ 'tut-tut' his way into convincing Five to grab an unheard-of _three_ cans of food for dinner. He hesitates, though, when he comes to the stove. "Do I cook them?" He asks, almost hypothetically, like he was trying to decide for himself just how much energy he had to spare.

AJ pauses at the question as he shrugs off his suit jacket, and unbuttons his shirt cuffs so he can roll up his sleeves. Partially because he intends to make good on the energy he has thanks to dozing for most of Five's trip to this safe house as he recovered from near-death by heat exhaustion, and partially as a test for a more fine motor skill for his sluggish hands. 

"I suppose if it feels better to do so?" he suggests. "I don't really know what cooked food is like. Or food at all, really. I get all the nutrition I need from nicotine. It's the closest chemical substance on earth that matches all the elements in the water and algae back home that my kind fed on. I wouldn't know the first thing about what cooked--" he picks up one of the cans Five had fetches and reads the label. "Spring peas and pearl onions is even like. Is food more nutritious and filling when it's warm?"

A grimace pulls over Five's face as he shrugs, "I think it's supposed to be. Sometimes I'd cook just to feel like I was back home. It was never as good as mom's cooking, but you can kind of imagine it's just a bad recipe if you think about it." Surprisingly honest, Five squeezes his eyes shut, "Whatever, I'll just eat them cold. The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can fix the briefcase and we can get back to what we had planned." 

Five grabs the can out of AJ's hand, setting it on the counter before pulling at the pop-lid of the biggest can, a loaf of canned bread that Five had been saving. He dips two fingers into the can and looks up at AJ as he steps to the table, collapsing on one of the small chairs beside it, "You can smoke in the house if you need to," Five says welcomingly, "I don't give a shit, and it's not like I have roommates." He says, laughing completely without humor.

AJ didn't technically need the permission, he'd already shared cigarettes with the boy after all, but he does appreciate it regardless if only because he would rather wait until Five was eating before he turned to feeding himself. His cigarettes are crumpled when he fetches them from his jacket, but they'll still work fine even if the one he lights up is a little bit bent.

They sit in companionable silence as they both take to their respective meals with gusto, AJ leaning against the wall just for the pleasure of standing, while Five hunches over his meager rations like he's starved. He honestly probably is. He's been wearing so many layers since AJ arrived that it was hard to get a real sense for how malnurioushed he must be, but just watching the things he chooses to eat gives the fish an idea of the reality he's living with-- and how much work they'll have to do to get Five into fighting shape. 

With his cans finished, and enough time spent in relative inaction, Five's tiredness comes upon him with a vengeance, and AJ has to practically haul him up by the arm to get him on his feet and towards a proper bed, just to keep him from hunkering down and sleeping in the corner of the kitchen. He falls instead facefirst onto a mattress upstairs that has sheets on it and everything, and AJ takes a moment to drape a quilt over him before he returns downstairs to get to work. 


End file.
